Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

JOHN ERNEST ROLFE AND FLORENCE IVEEN ROLFE (MARRIAGE ENABLING) BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered; to he read the Third time.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOCIAL SERVICES>

NHS (Costs)

Mr. Galley: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the per capita cost of the National Health Service throughout the United Kingdom in 1986; and what it was in real terms in 1978–79.

Mr. Knox: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what percentage of the gross domestic product was spent on the National Health Services in the most recent year for which figures are available; and what the percentage was in 1978.

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Norman Fowler): Between 1978 and 1985 the proportion of the United Kingdom gross domestic product spent on health care rose from 5·2 to 6·0 per cent. Over the same period, health spending increased from £301 to £384 per head at 1986–87 prices.

Mr. Galley: Is not this 26 per cent. increase per person throughout this country one of the most accurate indicators of health provision, suggesting vastly improved services and better health care for all? How does this increase compare with other Western countries?

Mr. Fowler: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The real growth in total health spending per head in the United Kingdom between 1978 and 1983 was about 21 per cent. and according to OECD data—1983 is the latest comparison that we have—that growth rate was higher than in any other Western industrialised country, with the exception of the United States.

Mr. Knox: Does my right hon. Friend agree that these figures provide an interesting reflection on the priorities of Conservative and Labour Governments?

Mr. Fowler: Indeed. The base figure that I am quoting in the figures is the base figure that we inherited from the Labour Government. If we want to go back to cuts in the NHS, we must go back to the last Labour Government and their cuts in the hospital building programme.

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: Is the Minister aware that when similar claims were made in Scotland yesterday the

genteel members of the Royal College of Nursing howled the Minister down? Nobody in the country, not least the 1986 Select Committee report on expenditure in the social services, believes a word of the boasts that the right hon. Gentleman continually makes about the Health Service. Is he aware that if we take into account the index used by the NHS with regard to pay and prices, and take account of demographic and technological changes we see that there has been a decrease in real expenditure on the Health Service between 1979 and today?

Mr. Fowler: What the hon. Gentleman said is typically absurd. Quite apart from the figures on finance, which he has entirely wrong, the real figures on health care, showing the number of patients treated, have shown a real—

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: Many are having to be treated twice.

Mr. Fowler: Well, surely the hon. Gentleman is most interested in health care, in treating patients and in providing for better health care. That is what the Government are providing through the Health Service.
I remind the hon. Gentleman that since 1979 nurses' pay has increased by 23 per cent. in real terms, and that contrasts with the fall of 21 per cent. under the last Labour Government.

Mr. Simon Hughes: The Secretary of State should come clean with the House and confirm that the United Kingdom spends a lower proportion of its gross domestic product on the Health Service than any European Community country, apart from Greece an d Portugal.
Does he accept that the logic of the argument that he and his colleagues adduced yesterday—that if one increases the total cake everybody gets a bigger share—is that we should increase the total expenditure on the Health Service as a proportion of GDP? That is the answer to the health inequalities from which Britain is devastatingly suffering. In that way, we would remove some of the horrendous inequalities that his Government were embarrassed to admit only a week ago.

Mr. Fowler: I do not accept for one moment that there are horrendous inequalities, and the report that the hon. Gentleman is holding is no objective indication that there are. The policy of the reallocation of resources and the resource allocation working party has meant a redistribution of resources to those areas which were deprived of them under the last Labour Government, supported by the hon. Gentleman's party.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Would not that excellent record on increased health expenditure mean even more in terms of better health care if steps were taken to control the escalating cost of pharmaceuticals on the NHS? Are not some doctors still wasteful in their prescribing habits, and will my right hon. Friend take steps to encourage them to prescribe generically where possible?

Mr. Fowler: We adivse doctors on good dispensing and good practice, but I am sure my hon. Friend recognises that the selected list introduced by the Government has meant a saving to the NHS of about £75 million. That policy has been entirely vindicated, despite all the opposition from the Opposition.

Mr. Dobson: If the nurses are doing so well under the Government, why did 30,000 qualified nurses and 6,000 nurses in training leave the NHS last year?

Mr. Fowler: That must be put against the total nursing strength of about 380,000. It is relevant to consider the proportion. The hon. Gentleman must explain why the nursing profession had to wait for this Government to introduce an independent pay review body, which it was never given by the last Labour Government, whose record on nurses' pay was a disgrace.

Mr. Speaker: May we have briefer supplementary questions, which will lead to briefer answers?

Hospital Beds

Mr. Waller: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will state his policy relating to the provision of hospital beds for convalescent patients within the National Health Service.

The Minister for Health (Mr. Tony Newton): The level and extent of provision of beds for convalescence is a matter for individual health authorities.

Mr. Waller: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that the limited number of hospitals providing special convalescent facilities for patients supply a demand existing over a much bigger area than a regional or district health authority? The Grove convalescent hospital in my constituency receives patients from all over the north of England. Therefore, is it right that a regional or district health authority should be able to make a decision to end such facilities, regardless of the broader or national dimension, which certainly exists?

Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend will be aware that the proposals to which he refers are being formulated and there would have to be widespread consultation before any decision was made. Should there be objections from the relevant quarters, they would come to Ministers to determine and, in that event, we would take account of factors such as that which my hon. Friend mentioned.

Mr. Carter-Jones: If there is a change in the provision of convalescent beds, will the Minister seriously take into account the importance of applying rehabilitation techniques within those convalescent places? Will he make sure that there is adequate back-up from the paramedical professions?

Mr. Newton: It must be borne in mind that there has been a substantial drop in the number of convalescent beds in Britain because of changing practices, and the modern approach to rehabilitation may well entail a different way of dealing with patients after they leave hospital, which is not something that I would wish to discourage.

Mr. Jessel: Is my hon. Friend aware that at the West Middlesex university hospital some 96 beds are taken up by people who, in the opinion of Hounslow and Spelthorne district health authority, need neither medical nor nursing care? As those beds are needed for other people who need treatment, will my hon. Friend see what can be done?

Mr. Newton: I shall certainly look at my hon. Friend's point. He will be aware that health authorities can consider a variety of options in such circumstances, including making contractual arrangements with private or voluntary residential or nursing homes.

Mr. Wigley: Does the Minister accept that there are three options when there are insufficient beds in the

National Health Service? One is that patients stay on too long, with the result that their beds are not available for those in greater need of them. The second is that they should be released into the community, but there are not enough resources and care in the community. Thirdly, that they may be forced into private facilities, as the Minister suggested a moment ago. Are not those three options unsatisfactory?

Mr. Newton: I respect the hon. Gentleman's views, but that was a wild series of generalisations. The position differs from area to area, but the general thrust has been to build up community care resources in a way that affects the issue of convalescent beds.

Unemployed Persons (Mortgage Interest Payments)

Mr. Barron: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many people he expects will lose by the changes in the payments of mortgage interest for the unemployed; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister for Social Security (Mr. John Major): Our latest estimates suggest that just over 70,000 claimants will be affected at any one time by the recent changes in supplementary benefit payments for mortgage interest for new claimants under 60.

Mr. Barron: Is it not typical of the Government that they first put people's homes at risk by cutting the mortgage interest rate relief by half in the first 16 weeks, and then tell people to take out insurance policies against that happening to them when they become redundant? The Government then have the gall to send out a circular to say that they will take at least part of that money away from such people if they take out those policies.

Mr. Major: We are not putting people's homes at risk, and there is no evidence to that effect. If the hon. Gentleman reads the remarks of the Building Societies Association he will see that it made that point clearly. There is no reason to suppose that people will lose their homes because of the change.

Mr. Forth: Does my hon. Friend agree that people who voluntarily take on the responsibility of home ownership, and who stand to gain enormously from the benefits of that ownership are reasonably obliged to accept all that it entails? They should make provision for themselves and not necessarily look to the state as the first resort in times of difficulty.

Mr. Major: That is a fair and valid point. Even from the first day of unemployment 50 per cent. of mortgage interest remains payable through the social security system, and the full amount is payable after 16 weeks.

Mrs. Beckett: Is it not extraordinary for the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) to congratulate the Minister, as he was one of those who during our debate sang the praises of mortgage protection policies? Is it not outrageous for the Minister to defend the policy in those terms when he well knows that if people have taken out insurance policies, which in any case are not very good value for money, the Government will take the money from them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) said. What sort of way to proceed is that?

Mr. Major: My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) is being entirely consistent in


his remarks today and in those that he made on an earlier occasion. We still have the most generous system of assistance with mortgage payments of any country in Europe.

Mr. Frank Field: May I ask a supplementary question to No. 3?

Mr. Speaker: No.

Mr. Field: Question No. 4, Sir.

Epilepsy

Mr. Frank Field: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement about attendance allowance to people suffering from epilepsy.

Mr. Major: Attendance allowance is available to people suffering from epilepsy who fulfil certain conditions for attention or continual supervision. These matters are adjudicated by the attendance allowance board or a doctor delegated on its behalf. The interpretation of the "continual supervision" criterion has been affected by the Court of Appeal judgment in the case of Mrs. Dorothy Moran. The attendance allowance board is preparing revised guidelines on this matter for use by its delegated doctors.

Mr. Field: I thank the Minister for that reply. Will he now answer the question in simple English, so that disabled people can understand? Will the Government now dispute the success of Mrs. Moran by going to the House of Lords, even though the Court of Appeal refused her permission to do so? Will the Minister extend his congratulations to my constituent, Mrs. Moran, for scoring her success? Is it not uncharacteristically ungenerous of the Minister not to extend his congratulations to the two lawyers—Mr. Nicholas Warren and Mr. Richard Drabble—who, on this and many other occasions, have advanced the Government's policy that everyone should remain within the law, including the Government?

Mr. Major: On the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, I am not quite sure of the current score between Mr. Drabble and the Government.

Mr. Dobson: Four all

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Major: Perhaps there is cause for congratulations on both sides. As regards the appeal, about which the hon. Gentleman asked his substantive question, we do not propose to appeal against the judgment.

Mr. Marlow: Will my hon. Friend look into the circumstances whereby epilepsy can be caused by the defecation of dogs in public areas? When he has done so, will he support his hon. Friend in the Home Office in taking action to clean up our parks and other areas, which are disease ridden at the moment?

Mr. Major: I admire my hon. Friend's ingenuity. I am not sure whether his supplementary question is related to the attendance allowance, but I shall ensure that Home Office Minister's are aware of his concern.

Mr. Soames: Is my hon. Friend aware of the difficulties that arise for parents of children below the age of two years who are not entitled to claim attendance allowance, while

a parent who is fostering a child who is severely handicapped and disabled is entitled to claim the allowance? Does he agree that this is an unfair discrimination?

Mr. Major: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that matter, which I am examining.

Southend General Hospital

Mr. Teddy Taylor: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many letters he has now received from the general public on the proposal by the North East Thames regional health authority to close the radiotherapy unit at Southend general hospital; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health ans Social Security (Mrs. Edwina Currie): We have received 15 letters which have been referred by hon. Members, together with about 1,100 letters direct from members of the public. If Ministers are required to make a decision on the proposal, we shall take into account all the representations that have been received.

Mr. Taylor: Does this flood of letters not show the serious concern that a regional health authority, which claims to be short of money, is planning to spend £4 million on closing a modern and efficient unit and to build an entirely new one 30 miles away, when there is no guarantee that it will attract as many patients as the Southend unit? Will my hon. Friend seek to remove the damaging uncertainty among staff and patients by trying to persuade the authority to abandon this silly empire building?

Mrs. Currie: My hon. Friend is right to suggest that the proposals involve an increase in expenditure, but not a cut in services. We expect that we shall receive rather more representations in the near future, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has agreed to receive a petition that bears more than 90,000 signatures.

Dr. McDonald: Is the Minister aware that the regional health authority's plan to close the unit at Southend will mean many of my constituents, including those who are suffering and ill, having to travel much longer and more difficult journeys to receive treatment? On that ground, will the hon. Lady discourage the authority from putting into effect the absurd plan of closing the much appreciated radiotherapy unit at Southend?

Mrs. Currie: The hon. Lady will be aware that the proposal involves only the radiotherapy unit. Other forms of cancer diagnosis and treatment will continue as at present and I have no doubt that they will continue to command the confidence of local people. The problem is how best to organise high-tech services, which are expensive and which need to be concentrated if we are to provide a good service.

Mr. McCrindle: Without commenting on the case that is being made by Southend, and before my hon. Friend becomes over-impressed by the public relations campaign and the petition to which she has referred, will she take note that other of her hon. Friends who represent Essex constituencies applaud the regional health authority's decision to construct a pupose-built cancer unit at the Harold Wood hospital? Will she take on board the fact that on this occasion, if on no other, the voice of Southend is not necessarily the voice of Essex?

Mrs. Currie: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who I am sure speaks very much for his constituents, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor). His comments serve to demonstrate the heat that is in this kitchen.

Mr. Hayes: I am sure my hon. Friend appreciates that she will require the judgment and wisdom of Solomon to resolve this problem. Those of my constituents who are cancer patients presently travel to north Middlesex, to a hospital that is under threat of closure. The choice appears to be between Harold Wood and Southend. My concern, and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle), is that our constituents who are suffering from cancer will have to travel an inordinate distance—a journey that will be uncomfortable and unpleasant—to attend the Southend unit. We find that intolerable.

Mrs. Currie: My hon. Friend will remember that during the debate on cancer on 13 February I said that we would attempt to get a more up-to-date view on the extent to which stress and travelling problems have an effect on the treatment of patients who are suffering from cancer, and that commitment stands.

Mr. Dobson: When will Ministers recognise that instead of dealing with each piecemeal proposition from each of the four Thames regions for the reorganisation of cancer treatment it would be better if Ministers got the four regions together, knocked their heads together and got them to produce a comprehensive plan for the treatment of cancer covering the arrangements in an area containing 13,25 million people?

Mrs. Currie: The hon. Gentleman is keen on telling local health authorities what to do, and we have made careful note of his views on that sort of centralisation. However, it is no good doing all that unless the money is available—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"] I recall that whereas the North East Thames regional health authority is now receiving a total of over £1 billion in revenue, under the Labour Government, supported by the hon. Gentleman, the total was only £407 million, barely 40 per cent. of what it now receives. The result is that we can now seriously discuss improving the quality of cancer therapy for all the patients concerned in the region, whereas under the hon. Gentleman's Government they did not have a chance.

Dr. Michael Clark: My hon. Friend will know that my constituency is in the Southend health authority area. She will also know that the North East Thames regional health authority proposes to reduce its number of cancer treatment units from nine to six. Is she aware that the population of south-east Essex is one quarter of the population of the North East Thames regional health authority? Therefore, is it not eminently reasonable that at least one cancer treatment unit should be in south-east Essex?

Mrs. Currie: My hon. Friend adds some sensible comments to the discussion. If the community health councils in the neighbourhood continue to object to the regional health authority's proposals, those proposals will come to Ministers for a decision. We do not expect that to happen before the end of this year and we will take into account all the representations made to us.

AIDS

Mr. Andrew MacKay: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a further statement on Government measures to combat AIDS.

Mr. Fowler: Action to combat the threat of AIDS continues to be one of our highest priorities. The latest research on our public education campaign shows an exceptionally high level of public awareness of how the AIDS virus is transmitted and how to avoid infection. We are continuing to develop the campaign. In addition, we have provided increased resources for research, counselling and care, and last month I convened two conferences : on predictions of the spread of HIV infection and on community care for people with AIDS.

Mr. MacKay: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the success of his public education campaign. If the number of AIDS victims being suggested as likely to arise in the next few years is reached, is he satisfied that there will be enough hospices?

Mr. Fowler: That is one of the areas in which we are planning increased provision. We will need not only more hospices but more hostel accommodation and more community care. All told, we need more community care involving not just the Health Service but the voluntary services and the social services as well.

Mr. Corbett: Why are there no proper AIDS counselling facilities available in Birmingham, to haemophiliacs identified as carrying the virus?

Mr. Fowler: We are providing resources in Birmingham but if there is a specific area of need I shall certainly look at that and seek to remedy it.

Dame Jill Knight: Bearing in mind the extremely serious implications of AIDS, what steps does my right hon. Friend have in mind to deal with the hard Left Militant Labour councils which actively promote homosexuality among children? Is it not ridiculous—[Interruption.]

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: Ban public schools.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Dame Jill Knight: I did not go to a public school.
Is it not ridiculous that large sums of public money should be spent on proselytising and encouraging homosexuality in schools while other sums of Government money should be spent in trying to stop the spread of AIDS?

Mr. Fowler: I do not believe that anyone would support or encourage homosexuality among young children, and I believe that that view is shared on both sides of the House.

Mr. David Young: What budget has the Secretary of State allocated to research on AIDS? What proportion will this be of the entire health budget? What research projects are being carried out internationally into this disease?

Mr. Fowler: We have just announced a £14·5 million directed research compaign, organised by the Medical Research Council, which I believe is one of the most exciting and potentially most succesful campaigns. In addition, research campaigns are being organised in other parts of the world, notably in the United States and in European countries.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Is not the only way to contain this killer disease, for which there is no known cure, and for which there is unlikely to be a cure for at least 10 years, to have widespread public screening of those at risk, so that those groups among which the disease is spreading can be ascertained and identified, and also so that the people who are carrying this deadly virus can be identified and treated?

Mr. Fowler: The argument on compulsory public screening, which is what I think that my hon. Friend is suggesting, means that one has to ask the next question, which is what one does with that information. Does one then advocate a policy of isolation? It is all very well talking about treatment, but, as my hon. Friend has said, treatment is not possible at the moment. We are looking at aspects of testing, although not at compulsory screening. There is now a consensus that public education is the No. 1 priority for a disease for which there is neither a vaccine nor a cure. I hope that my hon. Friend will support that also.

Mr. Meacher: Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that while the Government have given a commitment on publicity and research, they have given no commitment on future clinical care, which is far and away the most costly item in the AIDS budget? Will he confirm the projection of the DHSS on the spread of AIDS, which suggests clinical care costs of about £90 million within the next two years? How will this be met? Will the Secretary of State confirm that health authorities' existing expenditure on AIDS is now funded centrally only to the extent of about one quarter, so that, already, large funds are having to be diverted from other essential health care? Is this not yet another sign of the gross underfunding of the NHS?

Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman must grow up a little in some of the points that he is putting. As even he knows, we do not fund centrally individual programmes throughout the NHS. That is not the way that we have done it, nor the way that he, when he was in government, did it. I do not know where he gets the forecast of £90 million. We recognise the duty that is on us to provide resources so that people can be treated with decency and compassion. I hope that he will support us on that.

Mr. Stern: What advice will my right hon. Friend be giving to dentists in the NHS on the treatment of patients who are antibody positive? Will he be going along with the recommendation made in some parts of the country that such patients should be treated within specialised facilities, or will he continue to recommend treatment as part of the normal service?

Mr. Fowler: As my hon. Friend knows, precautions are already being taken. I hope that we shall be issuing fresh guidance shortly.

Income Support

Mr. Rogers: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he intends to include in the rates of income support to be proposed a sum to compensate for any rate contribution demanded from those on income support; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Major: The illustrative figures published in the technical annex to our White Paper "Reform of Social Security" (Cmnd. 9691) make no assumption about

increasing the income support rates to compensate specifically for an average minimum contribution. Final decisions about the level of income support rates have not yet been taken, but the hon. Gentleman may be reassured to know that the illustrative figures showed that the majority of people on income support would not experience any reduction in disposable income overall.

Mr. Rogers: Has the Minister noticed that the recent report of the Social Security Advisory Committee suggested that the proposal, which will make the poorest pay 20 per cent. of their rates, will cause real hardship, and that any switch to a community charge would make the scheme unworkable? Will he therefore scrap the proposition?

Mr. Major: I am afraid that I cannot take the action that the hon. Gentleman proposes. As he will know, when spouses and non-householders are taken into account, in many authorities more than half the adult population do not pay for half the services that they enjoy. That cannot be right.

Mr. Dorrell: Will not the income support scheme, which has been the result of intensive and widespread negotiation, be designed to ensure that adequate resources are available to everyone to maintain a decent and reasonable living standard? Against that background, is it not unthinkable that a rise in costs should not be matched by a rise in means?

Mr. Major: The first part of my hon. Friend's point is entirely accurate. However, the essence is that the illustrative figures set out in the White Paper alone show that the majority of people on income support would not experience a reduction in disposable income overall.

Mr. Hugh Brown: Surely that is quite wrong. During the proceedings of the Abolition of Domestic Rates (elc.) (Scotland) Bill it was admitted that those in receipt of supplementary benefit—presumably going on to income support—would still have to pay 20 per cent. of a rate bill for which they are not now liable. When will the Government make a decision on that? It is under social security legislation.

Mr. Major: The illustrative figures set out in the technical annex take account of the 20 per cent. rate contribution.

Mr. Ralph Powell: Does my hon. Friend think that, when the new system comes into operation, more or fewer people will receive state support?

Mr. Major: A whole series of different intangibles must be fed into the equation. I should be unwise if I were drawn into giving a specific answer.

Mr. Kennedy: Will the Minister clarify the point at which the interface is reached between rate contribution and income support? Is he saying that his Department and the Scottish Office are at one?

Mr. Major: We are one Government. Therefore, we are clearly at one.

Mrs. Beckett: How can the Minister justify the statement that he has just made, that the illustrative figures in the White Paper show that no one will lose? Clearly, an increased rate charge of 20 per cent. is intended, and the illustrative figures for the unemployed show no increase m income. The facts do not bear out the Minister's answer.

Mr. Major: I fear that the hon. Lady, uncharacteristically, is wrong. The facts do bear it out. The illustrative figures published with the White Paper clearly show that the majority of people on income support will not suffer any loss in disposable income.

Social Fund

Mr. Michie: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many representations he has received about draft guidelines on the social fund; and if he will make a statement.

Ms. Richardson: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he expects the majority of payments from the social fund to be made as grants or as loans; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Cohen: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if the guidelines on the social fund will include an indication of cash limits to be imposed; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Major: Draft directions and guidance for staff on the operation of the social fund from April 1988 were issued to interested organisations, for comment or for information, on 25 March. Comments were requested by 26 May, and to date no representations have yet been received. Decisions on the size of the social fund, its division between grants and loans and its allocation to local offices will be announced nearer the introduction of the second phase of the social fund in April 1988.

Mr. Michie: The draft guidelines published last week explicitly suggest that no help will be available for those paying fuel bills. Does that mean that the Government, despite all their boasting throughout last winter, intend to abolish the severe weather payments scheme in April 1988 without replacing it with another scheme?

Mr. Major: We have repeatedly said that we will keep under review the exceptionally severe weather payments. We shall reach our decisions at the conclusion of this winter.

Ms. Richardson: The draft guidelines suggest that grants will be made only to those coming out of community care. Will the Minister confirm that that means that any pensioner who applies to the social fund for help will receive only a loan? If that is so, pensioners will be very aggrieved and will feel discriminated against.

Mr. Major: That is not necessarily the case. There will be circumstances in which community care payments will be desirable. We have sought to set those out in the draft guidelines. The purpose of issuing the guidelines in draft form is to take account of representations, including those that may be made by the hon. Lady or by any other hon. Member.

Mr. Cohen: Do not the draft guidelines and the new social fund rule out not only grants but budgeting loans for such items as expenses to cover starting up in a new job or the returnable deposit that is needed to obtain accommodation? Is that not a false economy? Have not the restrictions been included only to make sure that the social fund is strictly cash limited?

Mr. Major: The social fund is replacing a whole series of regulatory entitlements that have not worked

adequately. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should carefully re-read the draft guidelines, because he may then find that he has just misrepresented them.

Mr. McCrindle: Will the Minister confirm that, because of the obvious elasticity of demand, any payments from the social fund relating to maternity or death grants will not be cash limited?

Mr. Major: I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance.

Mr. Meacher: Is the Minister aware that in order to win a narrow vote in another place the departmental Minister there stated explicitly that there would he no formal cash limits on the social fund when it is introduced, yet the draft guidelines that were issued a week ago state that there will be a budget? Will the Minister describe the difference between a budget and cash limits? Will he also confirm the ministerial hints that this budget will involve a cut of about £75 million for some of the most vulnerable families in society, and that forcing them to repay loans out of future supplementary benefit payments will drive them deeper into poverty and debt?

Mr. Major: The cash limit applies to the fund generally. The individual budgets apply to local offices. The hon. Gentleman was, frankly, inaccurate about much of what he had to say on the other matters.

X-ray Service

Mrs. Golding: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he has any plans to meet the Society of Radiographers to discuss the future needs of the X-ray service within the National Health Service.

Mr. Newton: We have no immediate plans to do so.

Mrs. Golding: I am sure that the Minister will be aware of the concern of the Society of Radiographers that it was not consulted before the Forrest report on screening for breast cancer was published. Is he aware that the society thinks that 600 additional radiographers are needed to cope with the additional work load? Is he also aware that last October the Society of Radiographers said that its school was 34 per cent. below the numbers needed to meet the demand? What do the Government intend to do to ensure that the Society of Radiographers is able to train sufficient radiographers to enable the breast screening programme to go ahead?

Mr. Newton: The hon. Lady has asked quite a number of questions. The advice that has been given to me, based on the Forrest report, is that only about 200 additional radiographers will be needed for the programme in the next three years. To answer the main thrust of the hon. Lady's question, the Department of Health and Social Security, the regional scientific officers of the National Health Service and the College of Radiographers have made a joint submission to the manpower planning advisory group for a study of radiography manpower to be completed in time for the 1988 student intake.

Supplementary Benefit

Mr. Meadowcroft: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give the number of supplementary benefit claimants in the Leeds, West constituency for the current year and for 1979.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Nicholas Lyell): In February this year, some 27,000 claimants were receiving supplementary benefit from the two local offices which serve the Leeds, West constituency. The equivalent number for February 1979 was 20,000, but the figures are not strictly comparable because the boundaries have changed.

Mr. Meadowcroft: Does the Minister accept that the figures are also not strictly comparable because of the basis on which supplementary benefit is awarded? Is the Minister not concerned that there should be such a level of deprivation in our inner cities, which has such a debilitating effect on a small section of the population, which is forced to live at subsistence level and which appears to have been given no hope by this Government?

Mr. Lyell: The hon. Gentleman ought to recognise that the real value of supplementary benefit has risen by 6 per cent. since 1979.

Appeals Tribunals

Mr. Loyden: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he has any plans to meet the chairman of the Social Security Commission to discuss the future of appeals tribunals.

Mr. Lyell: Officials maintain continuing discussions with the office of the president of social security appeal tribunals and medical appeal tribunals. I have no immediate plans to meet His Honour Judge Byrt, the president.

Mr. Loyden: Can the Minister give an assurance that the Government intend to maintain the appeals system in the benefits system? Will he take account of the fact that there appears to be some pettifogging bureaucracy that is discouraging people from attending appeals tribunals on the side of the appellants? Will he give a further assurance that he will investigate matters of this sort and see that those friends and other people who attend on behalf of appellants are encouraged, not discouraged?

Mr. Lyell: I can certainly give the assurance that we shall continue the appeals system. It works well. Those claimants who seek to appeal are encouraged to bring people with them. I should make it clear that it is our policy to pay expenses for a friend or witness who comes to a tribunal except where he or she is a paid member of an organisation and is attending in that capacity.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Ql. Mrs. Ann Winterton: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 7 April 1987.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today. This evening I am attending a dinner to mark the 30th anniversary of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Mrs. Winterton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in the light of the many achievements of the present Government, not least low inflation, rising productivity

and growing world respect, morale on the Conservative Benches is extremely high at present? Will my right hon. Friend assert today that the decision on the date of the next general election is hers and hers alone and does not depend on media hype, pressure or speculation?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend's assessment that the economic position and economic prospects are good. I am glad to give her the assurance that the date of the next general election will be decided not in Fleet street but in Downing street.

Mr. Kinnock: When the president of the Royal College of Nursing warns that if pay and conditions are not improved the service will crack, will the Prime Minister give the nurses their well-earned due, or will she give them the same patronising, self-satisfied response as was given by her Minister at the RCN congress yesterday?)

The Prime Minister: It was this Government who set up a nurses' pay review body. IC was this Government who last year accepted the increase of 7·8 per cent. recommended by the pay review body. It was staged. Nurses' pay as a result of that award was one third higher in real terms than in 1979, even before the last July increase. Under the present pay scales a ward sister on the maximum of the scale is £2,700 a year better off than if pay had simply been indexed since 1979. Our record on nurses' pay is very good indeed, and the right hon. Gentleman's Government could not hold a candle to it.

Mr. Kinnock: If conditions are as wonderful as the Prime Minister describes, why, does she think, did that most dignified of professions barrack her ministerial mouthpiece yesterday? If the nurses do not believe the Prime Minister, why should anyone else? As far as the pay review is concerned, since the Prime Minister failed to honour the recommendations last year and the year before, will she now give me, the nurses and the whole country an undertaking that she will honour the recommendations of this year's review in full, pay the increase in full, date it from 1 April and not evade, dodge or give short change as she has done in the last two years?

The Prime Minister: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman does not recall that under Labour nurses received pay increases of less than the rate of inflation for three years in succession. Our record on nurses' pay and on the reduction in working hours—because the number of nurses has increased by 60,000 and their working week cut by two and a half hours with no drop in pay—is excellent. We have not yet received the pay review body awards. They will be considered carefully when we get them.

Mr. Waller: Recalling my right hon. Friend's recent visit to the Soviet Union, may I ask whether she agrees that the Soviets, perhaps better than any other nation, can-understand the terrible carnage that conventional warfare can wreak? Thus, is it not misguided for people in this country to concentrate on nuclear disarmament, especially one-sided nuclear disarmament? Would it not be a better and nobler ideal to seek mutual confidence, leading to real security in Europe and elsewhere?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. When we are discussing disarmament matters, we have to consider nuclear, conventional and chemical weapons. If we are to get the reduction of weapons that we seek consistent with the defence of this country and its


continued security, we must look for increasing trust and confidence. For that, we shall have to see how the Soviet Union honours its treaty on the Helsinki accord and what it does over Afghanistan.

Mr. Steel: Will the Prime Minister instruct the Secretary of State for Education and Science to bring forward immediately positive proposals for the restoration of teachers' negotiating rights and a timetable to go with them? Will she recognise that if she fails to do that the teachers' dispute, which we deplore, will get more acrimonious?

The Prime Minister: No, Mr. Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman is well aware of our position. We have granted a considerable increase in teachers' pay. Recruitment of teachers, particularly in physics and mathematics, is going up. The arrangements that we have made in the meantime for teachers' pay negotiations are temporary until we reach a permanent settlement.

Mr. John Mark Taylor: Will my right hon. Friend take time during the course of her busy day to comment on the fact that total National Health Service spending is 300 per cent. of what it was in 1979? How does she reconcile that with what some people call "cuts"?

The Prime Minister: The National Health Service has many more resources under this Government than it had under the Labour Government. Those resources are found not by Governments but by the people who pay taxes—income tax and value added tax. Taxpayers pay well over twice what they did when we came to power. Any increase has to be met from their pockets. There is no other way.

Dr. McDonald: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 7 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Lady to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Dr. McDonald: What does the Prime Minister propose to do about the fact that one in four jobs for trained nursing staff in London is now vacant?

The Prime Minister: The National Health Service Management Board has commissioned a report to look at particular problems over the recruitment of nurses in London. The study team expects to report by late spring and the board will then consider what action may be required. So that is already being considered.

Mr. Alexander: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 7 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Alexander: Has my right hon. Friend had time to read recent reports of brutality towards young soldiers in training? Will she confirm that those reports represent a deviation from the high standards expected and usually achieved in the British Army? Will she confirm that brutal NCOs and the officers who turn a blind eye to their acitivities will be rooted out and transferred to areas away from recruit training?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that bullying will not and must not be tolerated in the Army or elsewhere in the armed forces. Reports that junior soldiers have been bullied are being thoroughly investigated, and if the allegations are substantiated firm disciplinary action will be taken against offenders.

Mr. Flannery: Will the Prime Minister accept that, though the teachers are involved in a struggle with the Government, I want to ask her a question about nurses? Does she realise that 30,000 are leaving the nursing profession each year. Although all of us need nurses—and very often urgently—they are being treated to howling abuse from her party. They are struggling as best they can for all of us, and they are being treated obscenely. Does the Prime Minister not realise that the nurses are struggling to stay in their profession and to help the rest of us?

The Prime Minister: This Government's record on pay to the nursing profession, on reduction of hours in the working week for nurses, and on the increased number of nurses in the National Health Service is better than that of any other Government in the whole history of the NHS. As I indicated earlier, on present-day scales, before any proposals are put before us for new scales, a ward sister on the maximum of the scale would be £2,700 a year better off then if pay had simply been indexed by the RPI since 1979. That is a good record. It is no wonder that there are now 60,000 more nurses in the Health Service than there were eight years ago.

Mr. John Browne: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 7 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Browne: Will my right hon. Friend accept that in March this year new car sales were up by 8 per cent. over last year and new car imports were down 5 per cent.? Is this not a clear indication that, under Conservative leadership, our economy is increasingly product-competitive and far more prosperous?

The Prime Minister: Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. It is very good news that car manufacturers here—whether Austin Rover or Jaguar or the multinational car manufacturers—are increasing their sales to the home market. It is part of the recovery of manufacturing industry, which is now doing very well under the policies that are being pursued by this Government.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 7 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Brown: Is the Prime Minister not even slightly embarrassed by the greed and avarice that the sell-off of state-owned industries at well below their market value seems to have incited in some people? Will she explain to the House why it is that these matters were discovered by the Labour research department and not by the Government's own watchdog?

The Prime Minister: I have nothing to say about any particular case, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman expects a reply on a particular case. Privatisation has led to millions of employees having shares that they would never have been able to have. There are now up to 8 million shareholders. That, of course, means nothing to the Labour party except bad news, because it leads to independence and personal prosperity, both of which are death to its policy.

Mr. Aitken: Will my right hon. Friend find time today to carry out a review of the unfair Japanese domination


of the once again postponed financing arrangements for the Channel tunnel? Is my right hon. Friend aware that in Eurotunnel's prospectus, for every one British bank involved in the financing, seven Japanese banks have signed up? In order to avoid these unfair 7: 1 ratios and the creation of a Franco-Japanese Channel tunnel, will my right hon. Friend intervene to insist on proper national investment quotas and limits?

The Prime Minister: I am not certain whether my hon. Friend wants a Eurotunnel to be built. I want a Eurotunnel to be built and I think, therefore, that I will interpret his question as inviting more British banks and British institutions to apply to finance a very exciting project.

Mr. Rooker: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 7 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to he reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Rooker: Will the Prime Minister tell the House what action the Government are taking to check the statistical validity of their recent claim that one in five people in this country own shares?

The Prime Minister: The Treasury's record on professional statistics is extremely good. I am not quite sure whose statistics the hon. Gentleman is questioning. If he writes to me and lets me know, we will see what we can do.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I will take points of order after the Standing Order No. 20 application.

Eric Bemrose Plant, Liverpool

Mr. George Howarth: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the proposed loss of 700 jobs at the Eric Bemrose plant in Liverpool announced yesterday.
The plant is actually in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), and he has taken an active interest—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members please leave the Chamber quietly and not walk in front of the hon. Member who is speaking?

Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend the Member for Walton is taking an active interest in support of the workers at the plant and has kindly agreed that I should raise this matter from my constituency viewpoint.
The matter is extremely important because the losses will add to the already unacceptably high unemployment that we are experiencing on Merseyside. Therefore, every effort must be made to prevent the job losses. It is also specific to my constituency as my local authority, Knowsley borough council, together with the Department of Trade and Industry, was at a very advanced stage in negotiating a financial package that would have involved moving part of the operations from a site in Knowsley to a new plant with up-to-date technology.
The company concerned is part of News International, a group which, as the House is well aware, has a less than happy recent history in these matters. The people of Merseyside, not least those in the trade unions, are anxious that the position should not develop along lines similar to the recent Wapping dispute. We hope that the whole issue can be discussed and debated to see whether the devastating decision can be reversed. To that end, I hope that the proposed move to the Knowsley site can be examined and discussed more fully before any irrevocable steps are taken.
The matter is specific and important. It would be thoroughly irresponsible not to discuss fully all the alternatives to closure. I hope that the House will have an opportunity to do that.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
the proposed loss of some 700 jobs at the Bemrose plant in Liverpool.
I have listened with great care to what the hon. Member has said, but I regret that I do not consider that the matter he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20 and I cannot, therefore, submit his application to the House.

Privatisation (Multiple Share Applications)

Mrs. Ann Clywd: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have twice in the past few days asked for a Government statement on the matter of multiple share applications. Outrage is felt among the ordinary public in this country about Conservative Members lining their pockets at the expense of ordinary people. I believe that, in view of that, we have a right to an explanation about the Government's attitude on privatisation and multiple share applications, particularly when they are made by greedy Conservative Members.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order. There are well known provisions for dealing with matters of this kind, and the hon. Lady should operate them.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that last week during business questions I asked the Leader of the House a question on this matter. You intervened halfway through my question to prevent me——

Mr. Speaker: Order. One thing hon. Members cannot do is to raise points of order with the Chair about something that happened last week and that should have been raised at the time. Points of order must be relevant to today.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am hearing a point of order.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: May I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that my point of order must draw on previous statements made in this House, including a statement made yesterday by the deputy leader of the Labour party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley)? I must be allowed the right to make a perfectly reasonable point of order.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am asking the hon. Gentleman to relate it to what happened today or, if he must, to what happened yesterday, but certainly not to what happened last week.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook intervened during the debate and you, Mr. Speaker, intervened to prevent him from raising the matter. You said :
The tradition is that we do not criticise hon. Members, except by motion."—[Official Report, 6 April 1987; Vol. 114, c. 23.]
You also intervened, Mr. Speaker, during the debate last Thursday evening in exactly the same way when I raised this matter, and you told me that I was not to discuss the matter on the Floor of the House. The answer that you gave to my right hon. Friend was very clear, and I ask you to give me the right to spell out my point of order.
The answer that you gave to my right hon. Friend yesterday was that these matters should be dealt with by motion. I have endeavoured to table two motions and you yourself, Mr. Speaker, had to amend one of them. They both had to be substantially amended and, in my view, the sense was lost. Therefore, it is not possible for hon. Members to table motions on this matter, despite the fact


that you assured my right hon. Friend yesterday that he had the right to do so. What is clear from all these rulings, Mr. Speaker, is that you feel that you are not in a position to allow debate to take place in this Chamber on an important matter.
My hon. Friends the Members for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) and for Hackney. South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) also endeavoured to table a motion last week. It took one and a half hours of negotiation with the Table Office to clear that motion. It is not possible to table motions in the way that hon. Members want to table them. Therefore, if we clear aside the prospect of motions and the possibilities of intervention either from the Back Benches or from the Dispatch Box, clearly it is not possible for hon. Members to raise this matter in the House.
There are two matters, Mr. Speaker——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not take part in a debate with me on this matter; he is raising a point of order. Come to the point, please.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Parliament is, therefore, not in a position to speak about these matters.
Two matters of order need to be raised. First, there is the interaction between the courts and Parliament on the issue of contempt of the House on which you, Mr. Speaker, are being asked to rule. Will you confirm that in considering issues of privilege and contempt you do so wholly independent of decisions taken in the courts, that you are not required to await a decision on prosecution, and that the House of Commons is completely free to take its own decisions? These are matters of order, Mr. Speaker.
Secondly, this matter relates to the rights of Parliament to ensure that it is not brought into disrepute by the actions of its Members. When a Member acts dishonourably, it is not Parliament that prosecutes but the courts, and the protection of the integrity of Parliament, unless Parliament exercises the right to expel, passes from the hands of Parliament to the Executive. In this case the Attorney-General has a duty to prosecute immediately. That is my case. The Attorney-General, by failing to prosecute——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I cannot be held responsible for what the Attorney-General may or may not do. May I confirm to the hon. Member—this is an important matter of considerable interest to the House—that the reason why I stopped him last week was, as he well knows, that he had raised the matter with me as a matter of privilege in an entirely correct way and until I had had an opportunity of considering the matter it would not have been in order for him to raise it on the Floor of the House.
With regard to yesterday, the practice of the House that governs reflections by one hon. Member on another is clearly set out in "Erskine May" on page 430:
Unless the discussion is based upon a substantive motion, drawn in proper terms"—
that is to say, a motion which admits of a distinct vote of the House—
reflections must not be cast in debate upon the conduct of …Members of either House of Parliament.
That passage sets out the proper way in which the conduct of an hon. Member may be debated, if that is what the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) wants to do. "Erskine May" makes it clear that to use any other method of proceeding for that purpose is out of

order, and if that course were to be taken the Chair would be obliged to intervene. That is a long-standing rule of the House that I am bound to uphold, as did my predecessors.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I have not finished my point of order.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have ruled on the hon. Gentleman's point.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I have not made my point of order.

Mr. Speaker: rose——

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I have not made my point of order.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat——

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I have not made my point of order.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have ruled on the hon. Gentleman's point of order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat at once.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Mr. Speaker, may I finish my point of order?

Mr. Speaker: I must say to the hon. Member that, unless he resumes his seat, I shall have to ask him to leave the Chamber.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall take Mr. Sedgemore.

Mr. Brian Sedgemore: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether you will help the House. I accept your ruling that if one intends to criticise an hon. Member one must do it on a substantive motion that can be debated. Last week my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) put down early-day motion 841. I was the second signatory of that motion. I stumbled across my hon. Friend when she was having some difficulty with the Table Office. We were told that the motion was perfectly in order but that there were people in the House who did not want it put down. I accept that——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I know nothing about that matter. I rule entirely as laid down by precedent whether early-day motions are in order. I do not take into account whether people in the House or anywhere else wish them to he put down.

Mr. Sedgemore: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I did not intend to say this, but we were told., rightly or wrongly—and my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley can verify this—that you were the person who did not want the motion put down. We were told by the Clerk of the House. My point is this. I accept—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The point of order is to me.

Mr. Sedgemore: I accept that we do not want a licence for Back-Bench Members to abuse other hon. Members. Equally, I respectfully submit that this is a debating chamber which, as has often been said by past Speakers, is a tinderbox which is liable to explode at any time. We


cannot be governed by club rules that may be interpreted only by certain individuals. I respectfully suggest that we need rules that are precise and easily capable of understanding by my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley and myself. That is my only point.
Am I not right in saying that if a motion is in order it should go on the Order Paper and that it should not need a debate lasting one and a half hours to get it put down?

Mr. Speaker: I have no knowledge of conversations in which I did not take part. I say again to the hon. Gentleman that, if motions are in order, they may appear on the Order Paper. However, I am also aware that there was, as I understand it, some kind of concordat between the usual channels. That may well be to what the hon. Gentleman is referring, but I have no knowledge of it.

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: On a further point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wish to discuss yesterday's exchanges, which have been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and which are recorded in column 23 of the Official Report. You will recollect, Mr. Speaker, that you intervened in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) and said :
we do not criticise hon. Members, except by motion"—[Official Report, 6 April 1987; Vol. 114, c. 23.]
I read—I am sure that you, Mr. Speaker, have re-read it—the paragraph preceding your ruling. My right hon. Friend was referring to the Tory party cynically surviving on double standards. "Erskine May" makes it plain that that is quite in order, that is, to refer to a collective party rather than to individuals in those terms.
My right hon. Friend then went on to refer to two hon. Members in terms that were not critical of the hon. Members; he was merely asking innocent questions. He was asking a very innocent question about—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I do not know what hon. Members are getting so sensitive about. My right hon. Friend asked an innocent question about what the hon. Member who represents Anglesey—I prefer to call his constituency Anglesey because I do not know how to pronounce his constituency—would say to an unemployed man who applied six times for supplementary benefit? That was a perfectly innocent question. My right hon. Friend also referred to the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Cockeram), and it was at that point that you, Mr. Speaker, intervened.
You must have known, Mr. Speaker, the context in which my right hon. Friend was asking those questions, because it has all been in the press. Both hon. Gentlemen have admitted that they applied for more than one allocation of shares in the relevant companies.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot have charges made against each other across the Chamber other than in the way I have already suggested to the hon. Gentleman. What is the hon. Gentleman's point of order?

Mr. Hamilton: I am suggesting that your intervention was misplaced because my right hon. Friend was not making, and never did make, specific charges. The charges have been admitted to in the press by the two hon. Gentlemen involved. The point at issue for you, Mr. Speaker, is how the good name and integrity of the House is protected in view of the reprehensible behaviour of those two hon. Members.

Mr. Speaker: I intervened, as I was bound to do—for reasons that I explained at the time and repeated today—to warn the right hon. Gentleman that he was getting into an area where he should be extremely careful. I must say to the House again, as I said yesterday, that, like every other Member of the House, I am bound by our long-established rules and practices. I intend to uphold them.

Mr. Andrew Faulds: I entirely accept the passage from "Erskine May" that you, Mr. Speaker, have just read. [Interruption.] Some of us have some respect for parliamentary procedures. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. This could be helpful to me.

Mr. Faulds: Indeed, Sir.
I intend no reference whatever to any present Member of the House, except to the Leader of the House. A few moments ago, you, Mr. Speaker, said that we could not go back—that was your phrase. I hesitate to correct you, Sir, but the whole of precedent is a matter of going hack. You then proceeded, Mr. Speaker, to say that we could not go back to yesterday, but if we are referring to precedent, we must go back to the day before yesterday. You will know, Mr. Speaker, as the House will know, that, on the initiative of the then Leader of the House in 1947, one Garry Allighan was expelled from the House—a little before my time—and in 1954 one Peter Baker was expelled from the House. In those instances the initiative to move expulsion was taken by the Leader of the House. The Leader of the House has quite specific responsibilities in these matters. It is open to him—indeed, it is a duty of his—to move for expulsion when any hon. Member is guilty of activities unbecoming to Members of the House. It would appear that that is the present situation and that it requires the Leader of the House to take some immediate action in the Chamber.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. We have an important foreign affairs debate—a rare occasion—and a great many right hon. and hon. Members wish to take part. If the House wishes to deal with this matter at great length, it can do so, but what the hon. Gentleman has said is not a matter for me. Of course it would be in order for the Leader of the House to do as the hon. Gentleman suggests, but I listened with great care to what the Leader said about this matter at business questions on Thursday. Procedures are clearly laid down for matters of this kind and the hon. Gentleman may take advice upon them and operate them if he so wishes.

Mr. Martin Flannery: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. We are only asking honourably for your guidance, and the guidance that we have had so far seems to place us in deeper confusion than we were at the beginning. It happens that certain Members of Parliament from over the way—[Interruption.] It is no good Conservative Members howling abuse and rudeness at us; we honourably want to know. I am sure that if any Opposition Member had made such admissions, the howls from Conservative Members would have everybody wondering what was happening.
Can you, Mr. Speaker, guide us about what we can do about two Conservative Members who have confessed that they have done things that are illegal, putting us in some confusion about what to do about hon. Members


who admit to such things? That is the only matter on which we are asking for guidance, and it is not unreasonable to ask.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let me clear up this matter once and for all. I understand that the Director of Public Prosecutions is involved with this matter. The House has clearly established procedures for dealing with such matters, procedures that have been used in the past and that could he used on this occasion. They would be perfectly within the terms of order, and if hon. Members wish to operate them they can do so.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have nothing more to say about that.

Mr. David Alton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Has not the Chair been placed in an invidious position and been caught in the crossfire in this debate purely because of the failure of the Government Front Bench to make a statement? Is not the frustration and anger that clearly exist on the Opposition Benches less to do with the action of individuals on the Conservative Benches than with the Government's failure to make a statement on what is clearly a matter of concern to the country? Should not we expect to hear from the Leader of the House?

Mr. Speaker: That is patently not a matter of order for me.

Mr. Richard Caborn: Further to that point of order Mr. Speaker. You have probably seen that I was one of the six signatories to early-day motion 841. I am a little confused by what you say.

Mr. Julian Amery: Sanctimonious buggers.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying about early-day motion 841.

Mr. Caborn: I did not quite hear that, Mr. Speaker. Did you ask the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) to withdraw his remark?

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I cannot have a point of order in the middle of a point of order.

Mr. Caborn: The right hon. Gentleman called me a sanctimonious bugger. I am not sanctimonious.

Mr. Speaker: Order. All this takes up a great deal of time. There will be great distress later in the day, when a number of right hon. and hon. Members who are now on their feet will find it difficult to be called because there is not enough time.

Mr. Caborn: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope that I shall not be interrupted again. As you will appreciate, I was one of the signatories to early-day motion 841 and I have been asked about that. I should like to know exactly how we can get that motion debated.
At the weekend, it was put to me in my constituency—I hope that you will hear me out, Mr. Speaker—that the state and a company have been swindled by an elected Member. Yet an old-age pensioner who was caught taking

a tin of salmon from a shop in my constituency was committed and charged with the offence there and then. What sort of standards operate in our society'? You have a duty, Mr. Speaker, to guide me, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Central, about how I can protect the good name of the House. Many allegations are being bandied about and bringing many hon. Members into disrepute. Unless the matter is brought out into the open by your guidance, Mr. Speaker, that will bring the House into disrepute

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: It will save time if I take all the points of order at once; I think that they may be allied.

Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I wish to draw your attention to the words used by the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) to describe my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn). He made his remarks clearly, and in the hearing of hon. Members on both sides of the House. He called my hon. Friend a sanctimonious bugger. That might be funny to Conservative Members, but it is symptomatic of the way in which the House has been dragged into the pits by the behaviour of Conservative Members. Is it not disgraceful of the Conservative Front Bench to do nothing when they have self-confessed criminals in their ranks? You must do something about that, Mr. Speaker, and ask the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw.

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Amery: I am happy to withdraw the second word that I used.

Mr. Terry Lewis: You will have gathered from the temperature on the Opposition side of the House this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, that there is great frustration about the whole matter. That frustration is shared by those we represent, as many of my hon. Friends have said. We still need clear guidance from you about how to raise the issue. We certainly need a statement from the Leader of the House, who has been dodging the issue and trying to push it under the carpet. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to do what is best for the House.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have already said several times that there are procedures for dealing with such matters. It is not for me to spell them out to hon. Members, because they are long standing and can easily be operated if hon. Members wish to operate them.
All that is required is a motion that is debatable. There are opportunities to debate these matters if the House wants to take them.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Is it a different point of order?

Mr. Skinner: It is a slight variation on the theme.

Mr. Speaker: I shall take the hon. Gentleman's point of order.

Mr Skinner: When early-day motion 841 was tabled last week in the names of my hon. Friend for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) and others, it struck me that it needed to be amended. Accordingly, I went to the Table Office last week with an amendment. It seemed a pretty simple task to amend a motion, and early-day motions can normally


be amended without a great deal of trouble, but because the motion concerned the hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Best) it seemed that special care had to be taken in deciding whether it could be amended. Hundreds of amendments are tabled, but when I went to the Table Office last week I was told immediately that if there were to be any amendment to early-day motion 841 it would have to be a matter for the Clerks at the Table. I thought that that was fair enough and I did not see why there should be any argument about it. Normally there is no argument about tabling an amendment.
It seems, however, that there are different rules for swindling Tory Members and for those who do not come into that category. When I was in my constituency during the weekend I was asked why I could not get the amendment down. I replied, "It seems"——

Mr. Speaker: Order. What is the point of order for me?

Mr. Skinner: As you will know, Mr. Speaker, I told the Table Office yesterday that I was not satisfied with the decision of the Clerks. I believe that the administration in the House of Commons has double standards and that that has been demonstrated by the stopping of my amendment. I told the Clerks to send it to you, Mr. Speaker, because you are the final arbiter on whether a motion may be amended.
Along with my constituents, I find it incredible that Members can be thrown out of the Chamber for saying during the miners' strike that the judges are Tories—and they were—when fiddling Tory Members become the subject of motions and we find that such motions cannot be amended. I think that my amendment, which drew attention to the activities of the hon. Member for Ynys Môn, was appropriate. I stated in the amendment that the Tory party, instead of disowning the hon. Gentleman, should take him to the——

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Skinner: This is a political issue.

Mr. Speaker: It may be a political issue, but, if it is, it is reprehensible to draw the Chair into the argument. I draw the attention of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) to page 382 of "Erskine May", where it states that a notice of motion is
not a proper subject for debate
if it is
tendered in a spirit of mockery.
I am bound by the rules, as everyone is in this place.

Mr. Harry Cohen: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that we should move on.

Mr. Cohen: rose——

Mr. Speaker: I shall take one more point of order, and it will be that of the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen)

Mr. Cohen: I wish to raise a different point of order, Mr. Speaker, but it relates to the same issue. I agree with the points which have been raised by several of my hon. Friends, but I recognise that you have ruled on them, Mr. Speaker.
Many of my constituents will be concerned about the greed that the hon. Members for Ynys Môn (Mr. Best) and for Ludlow (Mr. Cockeram) have exhibited. They are concerned also about the cover-up that they think has been

going on and the Government's protection of admitted wrongdoers. I wish to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to what happened in the House the other day during the conversation between——

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Cohen: This is a genuine point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: It is not if the event took place the other day. If the hon. Gentleman's point of order related to something that happened today, it may be in order.

r. Cohen: I wish to refer you, Mr. Speaker, to column 117 of Hansard and an exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and yourself. My hon. Friend said that the hon. Member for Ynys Môn had just made a statement that he made multiple applications for British Telecom shares——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Is the hon. Gentleman talking about something that happened yesterday?

Mr. Cohen: I am referring you to column 117 of Hansard, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Column 117 is a Division list.

Mr. Cohen: My point of order is still relevant, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is seeking to do something of which the entire House would disapprove. He is attempting to raise on a point of order something which happened last week, presumably, and not yesterday. I have been tolerant in taking points of order——

Mr. Cohen: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Cohen: I am not challenging your ruling, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I am not prepared to deal with a matter which did not arise yesterday, or to perpetuate what is clearly becoming a debate between Back Benchers and the Chair on a day when there is enormous pressure on Back Benchers on both sides of the House to take part in an important debate.

Mr. Cohen: Members' interests have been raised in points of order today, Mr. Speaker : Members' interests are involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover has suggested that the greedy share application in which at least £36,000 has been raked off should feature in the Register of Members' Interests. You have not taken up this issue, Mr. Speaker, and it has not been covered.

Mr. Speaker: Very well, I shall deal with it now. The hon. Gentleman knows that shareholdings below a certain proportion do not have to be disclosed in the Register of Members' Interests. Furthermore, he is aware, as is the whole House, that the issue is already under investigation by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

TERRITORIAL SEA BILL [LORDS]

Ordered,
That the Territorial Sea Bill [Lords] be referred to a Second Reading Committee.—[Mr. Portillo.]

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS &c.

Ordered,
That the draft Sheep and Goats (Removal to Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 1987 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments &amp;c.—[Mr. Portillo.]

Local Government (Supply of Goods and Services)

Mr. John Heddle (Mid-Staffordshire): I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prevent local councils discriminating against private companies who supply goods and contracting services, and for related matters.
I shall detain the House for only a short time. My Bill is designed to require local councils to allow private contractors the unfettered right to tender for the supply of goods and services, to stop them creating companies of convenience as a way round the Government's economic policy, and to amend an anomaly in the General Rate Act 1967.
The Bill will prevent a serious and growing abuse of purchasing power by some local councils. It is the practice of those councils to try to impose political conditions on private businesses that have nothing to do with their ability to provide goods and services. These councils seek to influence policy and gain publicity in areas such as defence, foreign affairs and employment, subjects that should properly be decided by the House and not by the lethal Left in control of councils such as Brent, Haringey, Lambeth and Newham, whose primary duty it is to provide their ratepayers with the highest standard of services at the lowest possible cost. It is not for them to impose their own interpretation of the law, but simply to administer it.
Over recent years the number of local authorities imposing onerous or irrelevant conditions on private businesses has been growing at an alarming rate. Such impositions range from the requirement to fill in long and detailed questionnaires which are wholly irrelevant to the firms' commercial and technical abilities to outright bans on firms for purely party political dogmatic reasons.
There are now over 40 councils which introduce overtly political considerations at some stage of their contractual process. Labour-controlled Tameside asks potential suppliers whether they make donations to political parties, the tacit threat being that if they subscribe to any party other than its own they will not be included on, or will be removed from, the tender lists. The London borough of Newham asks for information as to whether any of the firms or directors of the firms are freemasons. That is wholly irrelevant to the goods and services the firm is asked to provide. Links with South Africa, work at defence establishments such as Molesworth and Greenham common and the use of self-employed labour are other common areas of lethal Left local interference.
Self-employment is a dynamic sector of our economy. It has been responsible for a major part of the growth of the labour force in recent years and is the specific reason for the welcome and continuing reduction of unemployment. Those local councils which seek to ban this practice attack the freedom of the individual to sell his or her labour wherever they choose within the law. They would hamper economic flexibility and force more people into the black economy or, more sadly, out of work altogether.
My Bill in no way affects a local council's right not to use a contractor on the grounds of incompetence nor would it impair its statutory duties under existing legislation such as health and safety legislation arid the Race Relations Act 1968. I recognise that in some areas of high unemployment a percentage of workers living


locally should be employed locally and my Bill will make provision for that. However, it will also prevent the abuse of power by local councils which seek to interfere on issues that are, quite simply, none of their business. It will eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape, it will enhance freedom, encourage business enterprise and stimulate employment.
The second purpose of my Bill is to stop councils from creating companies of convenience, controlled by the same council buying its assets and leasing them back to it simply to evade the Government's financial guidelines. By way of illustration, I shall explain what is happening in Manchester city council. A total of 32 buildings owned by the council are to be sold to an investment company, also owned by the council. That company will lease the buildings back to the council. The money to buy the properties will be borrowed from a number of banks by a company controlled by the council called the Manchester Mortgage Corporation. Among the buildings affected are the central library, the central art gallery and a shopping centre in a suburb of the constituency of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris).
The buildings are valued altogether at £200 million. The Manchester Mortgage Corporation will hand the £200 million to the council in exchange for a 75-year lease on the 32 properties. The council will put the money into its bank account to earn £15 million a year interest. As soon as the Manchester Mortgage Corporation gains the leases for the properties it will lease them back to the council for 20 years, less one day. Interest will not be paid for the first two years. The poor ratepayers will have to pick up the tab.
Manchester city council is seeking to borrow against its capital assets to finance its day-to-day expenditure. That is illegal. However, that cunning piece of creative accounting is an attempt to achieve a way round the law be redefining the word "capital". My Bill would put an end to that.
The third purpose of the Bill is to amend section 34 of the General Rate Act 1967, which denies local town councils the right to receive direct rateable benefit from energy installations such as power stations. I have a power station in Rugeley in my constituency of Mid-Staffordshire and my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who sits on the Government Front Bench, has Sizewell A within his constituency and will soon have Sizewell B. Perhaps I can illustrate the point by referring the House to the Suffolk context. The recently published Layfield report said that one of the matters raised by local interests was the question of the financial benefit the locality could expect to derive from the CEGB in the event of Sizewell B being constructed. Suggestions had been made that the board should finance directly the provision of local amenities such as a swimming pool, sports centre and so on. Concern had been expressed that, although the rates that would be paid to Suffolk coastal district by the board would hugely increase in the event of Sizewell B being built, none or virtually none of this increased revenue would accrue to the benefit of local council finances because there would be a commensurate reduction in the rate support grant to the district council.
My Bill would seek to amend that anomaly. That anomaly does not apply to other public sector buildings

such as those owned by British Telecom but simply to energy installations. The CEGB has already drawn that point to the attention of my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Secretary of State for Energy and I sincerely hope that, if the House approves my Bill, my right hon. Friends in those Departments will seek to amend the Act.
The most important aspect of the Bill is to assist the ratepayers in Manchester and in those 40 and growing other local authorities where lethal Left-wing councillors are seeking to discriminate against their day-to-day interests in pursuit of party political dogmatic objectives that have absolutely nothing to do with their functions and their duties to the ratepayer.

Mr. Tony Banks: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Does the hon. Gentleman wish to oppose the Bill?

Mr. Banks: Yes, Sir.
Trying to secure a rational debate on a subject such as contract compliance is rather like going downstairs to advocate temperance in the Strangers' Bar. We have just heard a speech from the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle) which is typical of the graceless and mean-spirited approach that one is now getting from the Conservative party. In fact, it is typical of the hon. Gentleman himself.
This Bill is about contract compliance. The hon. Gentleman would like to ban all forms of contract compliance and in that he will find several supporters on his own Front Bench, including the present Secretary of State for the Environment.

Mr. Albert McQuarrie: How does the hon. Gentleman know?

Mr. Banks: I know because the right hon. Gentleman said so and I must assume that on that occasion he was telling the truth.
Contract compliance is not some alien doctrine. Indeed, the House of Commons passed a fair wages resolution, which is contract compliance, as did the London county council, the forerunner of the Greater London council, in 1891. Even the Government, who are attempting to reduce Britain to a state of economic anarchy, are still prepared to retain certain residual elements of contract compliance in the contracts they issue.
The GLC's work on contract compliance was based on the American model. It was not something imported from Moscow, as the newspapers were suggesting, but was based on the experiences that started in the United States under President Roosevelt when he signed Executive Order 8802 in June 1941. It took the race riots in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s for teeth to be put into that policy and it was President Kennedy who did that with Executive Order 10925 when the phrase "affirmative action" first appeared in the United States. It is now used to describe the generality of all programmes, policies or activities aimed at eliminating discrimination and promoting equal opportunities. It is working in the United States and it could work here.
President Reagan, rather like the Prime Minister, was trying to deregulate across the board. He did not like, and no doubt still does not like, affirmative action and contract compliance, so an onslaught was launched on the concept. However, in the end Reagan was defeated, not just by the


civil rights groups but by the American equivalent of the CBI, the National Association of Manufacturers, which said that it did not want to see affirmative action removed. The White House has now admitted defeated, and affirmative action remains. However, at a time when President Reagan has admitted defeat, the Government are prepared to fight the battle again. I can only hope that they meet with the same fate.
In this country, there is a need for contract compliance. The rate of unemployment among young blacks is twice as high as that among young whites, and the Policy Studies Institute estimates that at least one third of all employers discriminate against black applicants at the point of recruitment. Women's earnings as a proportion of men's earnings remain at about 73 to 74 per cent., slightly lower than their high in 1975 at 75·5 per cent. Sexual segregation remains a dominant characteristic of the United Kingdom labour force.
In respect of disabled people, a recent study estimated that an able-bodied applicant was 1·6 per cent. more likely to receive a positive response from an employer than a disabled applicant with equal qualifications. Bringing a court case for failing to meet the 3 per cent. quota established under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944 is unheard of. This quota is honoured more in the breach than in the observance by the Government, but when a borough such as Lambeth decides to try to meet the provisions of the 1944 Act it is attacked by the vermin in Fleet street and derided. A number of local authorities are attempting to ensure good employment practices with the employers and contractors with whom they have business. Whatever else one says, given the fact that about 80 per cent. of employment is now in the private sector, it is only by attempting to influence policies within the private sector that one can see these good employment practices pursued. Contract compliance offers just such a way.
We do not need a Bill like this. I know, whatever the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire might have said, what his real intentions are, because he has stated them here on more than one occasion during local government debates. We want a Government-backed scheme of contract compliance along the United States model. Without it, all the protestations by Ministers about deploring discrimination in employment will remain a massive exercise in calculated hypocrisy. Many local authorities are trying to do something positive and deserve to be defended in their actions by the House and not subjected to this cheapjack little Bill at the fag-end of this Government. I ask the House to reject it.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. John Heddle, Mr. Ian Gow, Sir John Page, Sir Geoffrey Finsberg, Mr. Robin Squire, Mr. John Watts, Mr. Malcolm Thornton, Mr. Robert Key, Mr. Eric Cockeram and Mr. John Powley.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SUPPLY OF GOODS AND SERVICES)

Mr. John Heddle accordingly presented a Bill to prevent local councils discriminating against private companies who supply goods and contracting services, and for related matters : And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 5 June and to be printed. [Bill 134.]

Foreign Affairs

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Portillo.]

Mr. Speaker: Before we start the debate, I point out that we were late in starting, for reasons that the House understands. As no fewer than 28 Back Benchers wish to take part in the debate, I appeal for brief contributions.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): It is five months since we last had a full foreign affairs debate, and it is clear that the main event for United Kingdom foreign policy during that period was the visit last week by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and myself to Moscow. It was the high point—to be precise, the high point so far—of this Government's sustained determination to achieve practical improvements in East-West relations. That has long been a central foreign policy objective of the Government. The House may recall that, in the corresponding debate in March 1984, I emphasised that we should try to break down years of mutual mistrust by talking to the Russians from a position of strength and confidence, but I warned them that we should be ready for the long haul. This is in no sense a short-term policy, and, as last week 's visit showed, it produces results.
The House has already heard from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister a full account of her talks. I am not today proposing to go over the same ground. Nor can I anticipate all the issues that hon. Members may raise later in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton), the Minister of State, will try to deal with some of them when winding up. However, few aspects of international affairs are not affected in one way or another by the East-West relationship, and I propose for the most part to consider matters in that context.
I begin by recording my view that Mr. Gorbachev's arrival at the top of the Soviet leadership has been a major event of real and lasting significance, nationally and internationally. Already, his presence in the Kremlin is having a manifest impact on life and government in the Soviet Union. The new Soviet leadership has brought to its system a long-overdue dose of energy and imagination, fuelled by an increasingly clear realisation that its system has been stagnating.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I made plain both during and after our stay in the Soviet Union that we warmly welcome the attempt by Mr. Gorbachev to reform the Soviet system. Mr. Gorbachev sees the need for that, but inevitably he sees the causes of his country's problems differently. It hardly needs saying that he is no Social Democrat. Probably the authority whom he cites most often is Lenin. He certainly does not intend to abandon the Communist system. On the contrary, he believes that it can and must be made to work better.
Characteristically, Mr. Gorbachev opened his speech at the Kremlin banquet with a rosy account of the superiority of the Socialist system, so we should not make any mistake on that account. That is what he sincerely believes. However, the need for reform is obvious. Some 70 years after the revolution, Muscovites are still obliged to stand queueing not for luxuries but for basic foodstuffs, household goods and other things, the availability of which we have long taken for granted.

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: I am grateful for the opportunity to pay tribute to the success of the visit. Is there not a danger, in trying to persuade the Soviet Union to move in certain important directions on human rights and other similar matters by too close a linkage with disarmament, that that linkage will be the death of international diplomacy?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend raises an important point to which I shall refer at a number of stages in my speech. I emphasise that only one linkage is inescapable and that is the extent to which a Government such as that of the Soviet Union fulfil their obligations—to their own people or internationally—in respect of such matters as human rights. That is bound to fortify—or not, as the case may be—confidence in their reliability in other respects. One cannot escape that, and what is true of an individual is true of a Government also.
The features of the Soviet Union to which I referred—chronic inefficiency and bad management—are not confined to that country. Other countries in the COMECON group are in a similar plight. The people of Poland and Romania, for example, are suffering real hardship. Hungary has managed its affairs a good deal more efficiently. I was able to see that for myself on a recent visit. But even they now face a serious foreign debt problem. They are understandably keen to expand their trade with Western Europe, and I hope that the European Community will shortly be able to finalise its mandate for negotiating a trade and co-operation agreement with Hungary.
After a series of journeys to the countries of the Socialist bloc—it is not for me to deny them that description—one must be struck by their utter failure to bring prosperity to their people. The contrast with Western Europe could hardly be greater. The Communist countries face the difficulties of managing failure, while we face, essentially, the difficulties of managing success. If Opposition Members wish to challenge that general proposition, they are welcome to change places with Soviet citizens whenever they wish.
The framework provided by the European Community has brought to Western Europe a period of unprecedented peace and unprecedented prosperity. We ended our period of presidency of the Community in December with the Community making good progress towards the vital objective of a single market in which goods, services and people move about freely. We are continuing to give priority to the liberalisation of the key transport sector—the removal of restrictions on movement by air, sea and land. Our presidency also saw the largest step so far towards curbing the excesses of the common agricultural policy.
Beyond the Community, the world's trading system as a whole certainly faces real problems. As the House knows, protectionist pressures have been gaining ground in response to persistent imbalances between the economies of the major countries. One of the most serious imbalances is with Japan. It must be said again that the Japanese cannot continue to enjoy a free run in Europe without themselves allowing in return free access to their own markets. The Community has set in hand an action programme for particular sectors : the House knows what they are. When I met my European colleagues last weekend, I informed them of the powers that we are taking under the new Financial Services Act, and they readily

agreed to my proposal that we should ask Community trade experts to consider, as a matter of urgency, further specific measures.
In regard to Cable and Wireless, the Japanese Government have been left in no doubt of the strength of British views. The company is still in negotiation with the Japanese authorities, and no decisions have yet been made.
Our objective is not to mount a trade war, still less to close markets. It is to secure the opening of those markets. The Japanese share with the rest of the world a responsibility for promoting those objectives.
The issues of free trade and technology have taken us some way from Mr. Gorbachev. Yet, curiously, the improvements that he wants to introduce in the Soviet Union echo—consciously or unconsciously—the basic themes of economic life in the West : personal incentives and responsibility, new scope for small-scale entrepreneurial activity, more freedom for individual farmers, increased reliance on market forces, and so forth. Those are the messages that are coming through from the Soviet system, based on the example of the West.

Mr. Robert Jackson: Is not the real point that Socialism is an idea whose time has come and gone?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend puts his point with characteristic lucidity and compactness.
It can be seen that Mr. Gorbachev's attempts to glean the practical benefits of restructuring and openness within the Soviet Union have political as well as economic implications, and those implications are international as well. We must ask, in that broader context, whether glasnost—openness—is welcome to the West, and I believe that the answer must be yes. I believe that a Soviet Union that is internally more open and flexible should be an easier and more trustworthy international partner. Certainly, we are ready to put the sincerity of the Soviet leadership to the test in different contexts. There is room for modest encouragement in the fact that the Soviet Union appears to be re-examining its approach to many international issues. Of course, the defence and advancement of Soviet interests remains the overriding priority, but there are some signs that the Russians may now be becoming more objective in their approach to at least some major issues.

Mr. David Winnick: I welcome the changes in Russia. I also appreciate the great personal freedoms and liberties that we have in this country, which do not exist in the Soviet Union. But when the Prime Minister was talking to the Soviet leader and lecturing him about human rights, did not Mr. Gorbachev take the opportunity to ask a question that I should have thought was very appropriate—whether the Prime Minister had lectured the King of Saudi Arabia, when he was here a week earlier, about human rights in his country? Should not human rights apply everywhere? We should not simply lecture the Soviets about them.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I think that the whole House would strive to see the achievement of human rights as widely as possible. However, none of that can allow us to escape from the central proposition that this is a question of fundamental importance in our relations with the Soviet Union, and to the relations of many people who wish for freedom to leave that country.

Mr. Winnick: But not in South Africa or Chile

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The world is full of a wide range of standards in the matter, but it is the Soviet Union that I am discussing now. The Soviet Union is one country that has fallen far behind the standards that it has set for itself.
If the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) can stand it, I shall move on to a less tendentious point on a different topic. Mr. Shevardnadze and I found a great deal in common when we analysed the implications of the disastrous war between Iran and Iraq. We agreed that it was in everyone's interests for the senseless carnage involved in that conflict to be brought to an end. Sadly, however, neither of us saw any great prospect of that happening soon. As permanent members of the Security Council, we both undertook to encourage and sustain the United Nations Secretary-General's efforts to end the conflict, and we agreed to exchange information on the situation in the Gulf of Hormuz.
British policy is clear. We shall continue to stand for freedom of navigation in the gulf. The House knows that there has been an increase in the time that the ships of the Armilla patrol spend there. That is welcome to our friends in the area, including King Fand, who we were glad to welcome on a highly successful state visit here two weeks ago.
In my talks in Moscow, there was also a measure of agreement on the central Arab-Israel question. We agreed that progress towards negotiations was urgently needed, and that an international conference could be helpful. But more preparatory work is needed, and we shall look forward to discussing that, among other matters, with King Hussein this week. I was encouraged by Mr. Shevardnadze's acknowledgement that contacts between the Soviet Union and Israel could have a role to play : the easing of restrictions on the emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union—a central question of human rights—would help. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I pressed them to speed up that process.
The tragic consequences of 40 years of hostility between Israel and the Arab states are all too visible. There is widespread concern in the House about the appalling conditions now experienced by those still trapped in the Palestinian camps in Beirut. We have just made available over £500,000 to the International Red Cross and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for relief work in Lebanon. I explained to Mr. Shevardnadze our strong support for UNIFIL as a force for stability in southern Lebanon. I welcome the fact that the Russians now support it, and pressed them to demonstrate that support by paying their arrears of contributions.

Mr. Ernie Ross: May I ask the Foreign Secretary two questions? First, is he aware that a personal threat has been made against the life of Dr. Pauline Cutting by the Amal forces in Beirut? What efforts are the British Government making to ensure that Dr. Cutting will be able to leave Bourj-al-Barajneh when she wishes to? Secondly, given that the EEC Foreign Ministers, back in May 1980, identified the West Bank as a central problem, and also identified the need for the Palestinians and the Israelis to accept each other's rights to exist, will the Foreign Secretary tell us what form he envisages the Palestinian delegation in any international conference taking? Will it be a PLO delegation, a delegation of Palestinian personalities approved by the PLO, or an Arab delegation containing representatives of the PLO?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman raises two points. I am not aware of the specific threat to which he referred in his first point. However, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office will look into the matter further before he winds up the debate. The hon. Gentleman's second point is at the heart of how to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli dispute, and the question is under discussion yet again in a number of places. It formed the background to our talks in Belgium at the weekend, and it is sustaining our support for progress towards the holding of a conference and our support for the extremely careful work that will be necessary to try to identify the right composition of the delegation. The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to give a compact answer to the most difficult question of all in this most difficult area.

Mr. Andrew Faulds: The right hon. and learned Gentleman, for whom I have great regard for his many successes in a Government who have not always understood some of the problems, must be aware that there is a strategic alliance between Israel and America that puts America out of court to dictate the terms of the composition of any delegation, or about which proposals may be made. Is it not entirely unreasonable that Israel, very much a party to this dispute, and America, with that highly effective political lobby, should be able to lay down regulations as to whom the Palestinian delegation should consist of? There is general acceptance throughout the world that the PLO is the representative of the Palestinians. Why do the British Government not have the guts and the gumption to say so?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman concluded his benign question with a rather sharper shaft of criticism.

Mr. Faulds: That does not lessen my affection.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am most grateful for that. The fact is that no participant or principally interested party can claim to dictate the composition of the final deputation. There are many different moves and decisions to be taken, and many factions could shift their position which would lead to a conclusion that rendered further progress impossible. For example, the Palestine National Council is meeting later this month. If it were to take a decision that was exclusive in a certain direction, that would make it extremely difficult to put together the deputation that in the end would be necessary.
The position that we adopt when we talk to the Soviet Union, the Palestinians, Israel or the United States is that we must endeavour to move towards common ground in the composition of that deputation rather than the reverse. The hon. Member for Warley" East (Mr. Faulds) could detain the House for many hours on this fascinating subject, but I want to say just one thing more about the Lebanon.
I cannot leave that question without saying a word about the British citizens who are held there. We are continuing to do all that we can to help to secure the release of Mr. Terry Waite and the others. I am afraid that I have no fresh news to give to the House about these matters. We are in close contact with all their families, as well as with the Archbishop of Canterbury and his staff.
Our policy remains firm. We shall certainly not make substantive concessions to terrorists and hostage-takers. It remains true that to do so would simply fuel their


malevolent ambitions. The middle east will remain on our agenda for talks with the Russians. It has featured in all my four meetings with Mr. Shevardnadze in the last nine months. I have accepted another invitation to meet him in Moscow again later this year.
There are many issues on which we do not agree. One is Afghanistan. The Prime Minister and I stressed last week that positive Soviet moves to end the occupation would change the way that the world assesses Soviet intentions in other areas. The Russians should respect world opinion, withdraw their troops and allow the Afghan people to determine their own future in freedom. As part of any settlement, more than 4 million refugees must be allowed to return to their own country.
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said last week in the House, the Russians would clearly like to withdraw from Afghanistan but do not know how best to go about it. Be that as it may, so long as Soviet troops remain on Afghan soil we must all draw our own conclusions about Soviet claims to be uniquely motivated by the search for peace
The Prime Minister and I have been glad of the chance to discuss this and other issues with our friends from Pakistan on their visit to Britain this week. The whole House has welcomed the progress that has been made in restoring democratic government to Pakistan. We welcome Prime Minister Junejo as well as my distinguished colleague, Yaqub Khan. We applaud their determination to shoulder the burden that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan has placed on their country, and we extend our sympathy to those who have suffered death and injury in recent air attacks on Pakistan.
The House also knows that we have been discussing with the Government of India the improvement of extradition arrangements, with special provision for crimes of terrorism. I understand the concerns of some constituents of hon. Members, including those in the Sikh community in this country. I assure them that the proposed new arrangements will, of course, retain the usual humanitarian safeguards, but they will also reflect the joint determination of Britain and India to stand firm against terrorism. The Indian Government have themselves suffered grievously from this scourge. They need be in no doubt about the firmness of Her Majesty's Government's commitment to the unity and territorial integrity of India.

Sir John Biggs-Davison: Is it my hon. and learned Friend's impression that the Government of India remain the only obstacle to the return, which we would welcome, of Pakistan to the Commonwealth?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: That raises a much wider question. I should certainly not form the view that my hon. Friend has offered. The question of Pakistan's return to the Commonwealth would he a matter for the members of the Commonwealth as a whole, and it would have to be discussed on that basis. My hon. Friend should certainly not keep to the conclusion that he has offered on that question.
To return to my central theme of East-West relations, Mr. Gorbachev has made very clear his belief that it is in the interests of the Soviet Union that the military arsenals of both East and West should be significantly reduced.

Certainly he appears to realise the enormous strain that ever-increasing Soviet military expenditure places on the Soviet economy, and he is worried about the potential military applications of the West's technological ability. He offers plain views on the best way to bring about cuts in nuclear and other weapons. Nobody should be surprised that our views are not identical, but that did not stop us last week from tackling head-on the key questions : can we negotiate arms reductions on terms that both sides accept, and how should we set about achieving those reductions? Once both sides see that their vital interests can be furthered by agreement in these areas, I believe that patient negotiation can and will bring results. That analysis has been the basis of this Government's long term policy for East-West relations.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Yes, in just a second.
We saw solid results last September in Stockholm—the first major East-West agreement on security issues for years.

Mr. Dalyell: If the Zircon satellite were of such vital technological interest, why was it that, when it was told, the Foreign Office did not act on the information of Professor Sir Ronald Mason and Sir Frank Cooper? Will the Foreign Secretary clear up why the Foreign Office did not do that straight away? Was it not a dereliction of duty not to do so?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: It is always fascinating to have an insight into the way in which the hon. Gentleman's mind works and to notice that a reference to a vital technological interest in this much broader context immediately presses the button marked "Zircon". The hon. Gentleman can no doubt seek an answer to that question if he catches your eye during the debate, Mr. Speaker. I do not propose to be distracted and to go down that path at the moment.
I was saying that the Stockholm agreement was and should be noted as the first major East-West agreement on security issues for years. In other words, the policy that I have outlined is a policy that has been shown to work—a policy that involves proceedings step by step, cautiously but hopefully. I believe that we can now hope for progress. In particular, we wish to see the total elimination of longer-range intermediate nuclear forces in Europe.
The zero-zero option was a NATO proposal. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear in Moscow, we are fully committed to allowing an INF agreement on that basis. Mr. Gorbachev has finally accepted it but, as NATO has always recognised, it would be senseless to remove one whole category of devastating weapons while handing to the Russians a blank cheque for others. That is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and Mr. Gorbachev agreed in Moscow on three things : strict verification, constraints on shorter-range missiles and immediate follow-on negotiations to deal with such systems more fully.
One area in which there remains a potentially serious disagreement is that of the right to match Soviet shorter-range intermediate nuclear force deployments. We see no reason why the West should accept a Soviet monopoly. But we are moving forward and if we are able to reach a satisfactory INF agreement that should enhance the


prospects of progress in three other important areas: a 50 per cent. cut in strategic weapons, total worldwide elimination of chemical weapons, and negotiations to reduce conventional forces.
Our visit to Moscow has shown the truth of what everybody sensible has known all along, that straight talking does produce dividends. Never before has any Soviet leader heard such a detailed account of Western positions on arms control issues and of where we see scope for progress. Never before have a Western and a Soviet leader had such a long and frank exchange on the rights and wrongs of their respective political systems.
This offers an astonishing contrast to the performance of the Labour party. The Prime Minister and I went to Moscow seeking to establish with the Soviet Union an effective, honest working relationship. The Leader of the Opposition and the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) went to Washington in search of a cover-up for their defence policy. Before he left for Washington the right hon. Member for Leeds, East proclaimed :
Our policies are much the same as President Reagan's.
It would be extremely interesting to know whether that came as more of a surprise to members of the Opposition than it must have to President Reagan. Yet after the meeting in Washington the Leader of the Opposition was at pains to deny that he had even mentioned to President Reagan two of the central planks of Labour defence policy : unilateral nuclear disarmament and the removal of United States nuclear forces from Britain. It must be said in his favour that perhaps he did not have the time to do so.
Far from going to the White House to explain Labour policies, the right hon. Gentlemen hoped that their visit would serve to conceal them. Theirs was an enterprise which did not succeed and which did not deserve to succeed. I noticed that on his return the right hon. Member for Leeds, East said rather plaintively on television that
Mr. Gorbachev was more critical of Mrs. Thatcher than Mr. Reagan had been of Labour.
I see that the right hon. Gentleman endorses those words. I am not sure whether he was complaining or boasting, but the fact that he was able to make an observation of such manifest confusion demonstrates more clearly than anything else the total confusion in the minds of leaders of the Opposition as to whose side they are really meant to be on. This climax of confusion coincided with the drafting in, as I understand it, of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East to organise a foreign policy success for the Leader of the Opposition. It must be said that that is not a very easy task.
There is a serious side to all this. Only a couple of weeks ago the Labour party issued a glossy policy pamphlet called "Europe: the new detente". It is a document riddled with anti-Americanism which proposes breaking up the common Western approach to the Helsinki agreement. It advocates greater tolerance of totalitarian systems and amounts to a charter for the break-up of NATO and a blueprint for a neutral Europe.
By contrast with that, we have not compromised vital national interests. We have not swallowed alluring proposals that would have weakened our security and the security of the West as a whole. We have shown the world that confident and determined diplomacy gets results. We and the Western Alliance can take satisfaction in having stuck to policies to which Mr. Gorbachev now finds it possible to respond.
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the House last week, our stay in Moscow gave a welcome boost to Anglo-Soviet trade. It enabled us to bring to a conclusion bilateral work which has been going on for many months on three intergovernmental agreements and a memorandum of understanding. The documents that I signed dealt with such matters as co-operation on space research, upgrading the hotline between London and Moscow, the siting of new embassies here and in Moscow, school exchanges, an end to jamming of broadcasts and more exchanges of journalists and television programmes.
We made it clear in Moscow that the Soviet Union's readiness to live up to its Helsinki commitments, particularly those on human rights—and this is the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend)—inevitably affected Western readiness to trust the Soviet Union in other areas.
We raised well over 100 individual human rights cases with the Soviet leadership. It undertook to look into those cases. There has been some progress in this area, which we should acknowledge, but it is still far from enough. The changes that are taking place are exemplified by the fact that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I were able to meet at the British embassy such people as Dr. Sakharov and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Begun. I found those occasions very poignant. Here I was meeting people in Moscow whose names I had myself raised time and time again with the Soviet leadership. Now they were free at last, after years of persecution, persecution simply because they believe in the rights and freedoms which we enjoy and take for granted. [Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) is not able to join the whole House in concluding that it is changes of this kind that publicly remind Governments that East-West relations are about much more than the acronyms of arms control and that the human dimension—people and their lives and liberty—remains absolutely central.
So, too, is the continuing wider mistrust, which we are only just commencing to break down. So, too, is the huge armoury of weapons, chemical and conventional as well as nuclear, which the Soviet Union and its allies continue to deploy in offensive formation against the peoples of western Europe. We do not say that those weapons prove an intention to attack, but they represent a clear threat; they demonstrate continuing suspicion and hostility towards the outside world.
If Mr. Gorbachev, with his insight and his leadership, can at long last help us to start breaking down these barriers he will indeed have made a mark on history. It must be said that the visit of my right hon. Friend to Moscow was in itself a significant step forward. It is greater understanding between the super-powers that will bring greater security to the world, and my right hon. Friend has made a historic contribution to this.

Mr. Richard Hickmet: I notice that my right hon. and learned Friend is coming to the end of his statement and I want to deflect him for one moment from his central theme to NATO and relations between Greece and Turkey. He was in Moscow during the dispute in the Aegean. Did he raise with Mr. Shevardnadze whether the Soviet Union accepts the Aegean as international waters? On a broader point, how does he see present relations between Greece and Turkey


affecting NATO and what initiatives can and should Her Majesty's Government consider for bringing those two countries closer together?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: That is the kind of point that I expect from my hon. Friend. I know that it is a matter in which he takes a serious interest. It may be a trailer of the speech that I hope he will be making, but if not my hon. Friend will have an opportunity of dealing with it later on.
Throughout all these contacts we have kept out allies closely informed. Over the weekend, as the House knows, I had the opportunity of a full discussion with Community colleagues in Belgium. On Thursday of this week I shall go to Washington for another of my regular meetings with Secretary of State George Shultz, whom I last met in January. I shall take the opportunity to brief him fully on our talks in Moscow prior to his own visit there next week.
We shall also, of course, discuss the full range of disarmament and regional questions. I shall make it clear that we should like to see his talks in Moscow make progress and that he goes with our good wishes, but that we, like the United States and the rest of our allies, are clear that it must be on a basis which does not compromise the security of the West.
International events as they unfold underline more and more the relevance and effectiveness of this Government's policies on arms control and East-West affairs. Nothing has highlighted the irrelevance and ineffectiveness of the polices of the Opposition quite so starkly as the events of the last week. The unilateralist party finds itself like a dinosaur, stranded in a changed world, stranded without a future, but still, I fear, with a considerable capacity for wreaking havoc. For years now the Opposition have attempted to portray Her Majesty's Government as aggressive, inflexible and a threat to peace. But in this, as in so many other respects, they have been proved totally and absolutely wrong.
We welcome the changes that Mr. Gorbachev is trying to introduce, but it is idle to expect the iron curtain to melt away overnight. The Soviet Union represents a powerful challenge to the West, determined to uphold the Communist system at home and to advance its influence abroad. We can do business with the Soviet Union, but only if the West stays united and only if we have serious policies, pursued in a serious way by serious leaders. That is what the Government have offered for the last eight years, and intend to continue to offer for a number of years to come.

5 pm

Mr. Denis Healey: First, let me say that we on this 'side of the House welcome greatly this debate, delayed as it has been, and delayed even further this afternoon. I regret that I shall have to leave for a visit to the far east before it is concluded—[Interruption.] I shall be working for Britain.
Let me start by offering the Foreign Secretary sympathy. He was ignored in Russia and he was snubbed in Europe, but I think that he was right to give a jaunty welcome to the miracle of Moscow, by which I mean the conversion of the Prime Minister to a rational view of the Soviet Union which the Foreign Secretary has been urging on her, his briefers tell us, at least since 1983. For that achievement I forgive him for allowing his electoral

preoccupations to entangle him in a web of metaphor at the end of his speech, which left us perplexed about what he was trying to get at.
The Foreign Secretary was right, as was the Prime Minister last week, in telling us that East-West relations are the key to the stability and peace of the world. He was right to endorse the Prime Minister's view that we now stand at a historic turning point in East-West affairs and that, provided we are patient and deal with the problems step by step, we may make quite rapid progress towards improving the position.
I am bound to remind the House that the biggest obstacle to progress over the last eight years has been the Prime Minister's personal hatred of the Soviet Union. The Foreign Secretary will recall the outburst of megaphone diplomacy, as his predecessor described it, by the Prime Minister in October 1983 when she described the Soviet system as
a modern version of the early tyrannies of history—its creed barren of conscience, immune to promptings of good and evil.
Only a few weeks ago her parliamentary private secretary told a doubting electorate somewhere in Yorkshire that if Britain cancelled the Trident programme it would be transformed into a nightmare society, an East European style people's democracy with Soviet bases targeting missiles at the United States of America.
Mr. David Watt, whose recent tragic death all of us on both sides of the House deplore, reported recently in The Times that the Prime Minister had held a seminar at Chequers on change in the Soviet Union. After she had been told by experts from the United States and Britain of the nature of the changes under way, she permitted herself an astonishing outburst in which she shrieked :
Socialism is an unmitigated evil. They never change.
The Prime Minister produced a trailer for her visit to Moscow in that hair-raising speech at Torquay which was fiercely criticised by her Soviet hosts. Even as her aircraft was landing at Moscow airport she told the journalists aboard that Russia could not be trusted to keep any disarmament agreement if it put people in prison for their religious or political views. She said that as long as it did so it would be a danger to other countries. That remark came from the main protector in the world of the apartheid regime in South Africa who had just spent a week in London paying obsequious court to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.
The Prime Minister stuck to the same line in her speech at the Kremlin banquet and was rapped over the knuckles by Mr. Gorbachev for her pains. We remember the headlines—"Icy Gorbachev flays Thatcher". No, I am sorry; such a headline is applied only to what the Leader of the Opposition does not do in Washington and not to what the Prime Minister does in Moscow. Yet 24 hours after making that speech, for which she was immediately castigated by the Soviet leader, everything had changed. I watched the interview she had with Mr. Wheeler. She was melting and dewy-eyed. She praised Gorbachev to the skies as a man of "fantastic courage", "utterly outstanding and reasonable", who could be trusted implicitly to carry out any promise he made.
I have been wondering ever since what produced this miraculous conversion. Was it those 12 hours of philosophical debate? The discussion lasted for 12 hours because every now and then Mr. Gorbachev actually succeeded in getting a word in, and there are signs that at


some stages she actually listened to what he said. Later, the Soviet spokesman, Mr. Gerasimov, talked of a chemistry between them. If the press reports are right, I suspect that the chemistry was a love potion.
A Daily Mail reporter wrote while she was there:
It is possible that only a woman, and perhaps only this woman, would have the effrontery or audacity to use her sex as a weapon quite ruthlessly. But she turned it on like an old time Hollywood film star—and they loved it.
Let me quote from another great national newspaper :.
The Spring-like pictures also show why Mrs. Thatcher refused to let her husband Denis accompany her on this historic visit. For photographer Ken George and I witnessed the Prime Minister strolling arm-in-arm with Mr. Gorbachev, pausing to kiss and cuddle him—and even tickle him under the chin like some flirty schoolgirl. Romance, April-style, was clearly in the air.
One touch of Venus transformed the iron lady into Lola Montez.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tim Renton): The right hon. Gentleman is like a small boy at a fair with a bran tub, putting his hand into the bran to see what little parcelled insult he can bring out. He knows very well that the words he has just quoted about tickling under the chin and all that come from a Daily Mirror April fools day joke. He knows that is true and he should have the decency to tell the House that.

Mr. Healey: I am surprised that the Minister has the brass to show his face; after all, he told us only yesterday that the Prime Minister should go for a general election today. His disgraceful comments after a recent visit to Moscow led the Soviet official spokesman to describe him as guilty of self-advertisement for election purposes. The House is familiar with his record.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, in this love tryst, as it was described by The Sunday Times, who seduced whom? The fact is that Mr. Gorbachev won hands down. He converted her lock, stock and barrel. As Julius Caesar nearly wrote—she came, she saw, he conquered. The Prime Minister got nothing concrete whatever out of her visit—a verdict that was given by The Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Independent and even The Times itself. She got nothing for Britain but she got something for her party, because her royal progress—in which she found it impossible to use the singular person pronoun and scattered the word "We" like confetti when referring to her own royal personage—was carefully orchestrated by her Potemkin, Mr. Bernard Ingham, as useful pre-election propaganda. This is how the outside world—United States, Germany, France and Italy—saw the visit.
The psychological transformation that the Prime Minister seems to have undergone has some relevance and will be useful if it lasts. Let me list some of the changes in her position by the end of her visit compared with her position before she left. Only a month ago she said that we could not accept the zero option for medium range missiles without simultaneous cuts in shorter range intermediate missiles. Now she says—and the Foreign Secretary repeated it—that all she is asking for is a freeze pending immediate negotitations.
She distanced herself from President Reagan on three issues. She rejected the idea in her Kremlin speech that the strategic defence initiative could ever provide a complete defence against nuclear weapons. She put forward her own independent proposal for how to deal with the ABM treaty

and the strategic defence initiative so as to clear the way for 50 per cent. cuts in strategic nuclear weapons. The American Administration immediately rejected the proposals that she had made. She also put forward proposals for verifying a ban on chemical weapons, which Mr. Gorbachev accepted and the United States so far has rejected. All these are useful and important contributions to East-West relations on which I congratulate the Government and the Foreign Secretary, who has worked so hard for what Mr. Gorbachev achieved so fast.

Mr. Donald Anderson: Educating Rita.

Mr. Healey: Educating Rita, indeed, as my hon. Friend suggests.
The Prime Minister made one point that the Russians must think about much more carefully. So far they have refused to agree on any cuts in strategic nuclear forces unless the United States abandons the strategic defence programme. But, as she pointed out in Moscow, there is no chance of that programme achieving the objectives that President Reagan originally set for it and still believes it can achieve. There is no chance of the American Congress funding it at the level that the President wants, and still less of funding it if it is an obstacle to a strategic nuclear weapons agreement. It is almost certain that the next American President will revise or abandon it as soon as he takes office.
For those reasons, the Soviet Union would be wise to get on now with drafting an agreement for a 50 per cent. cut in strategic nuclear weapons and leave aside the question of SDI for the moment. I know that Mr. Sakharov—and I am delighted that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were able to see him—has argued a similar case both in the Moscow forum and in a recent interview in Newsweek.
The only thing I wish the Prime Minister would do—if she is serious about this shift in her policy—is to join the German Chancellor Herr Kohl in clearly rejecting President Reagan's current attempts to broaden the ABM treaty and to begin a programme of tests in space which would certainly violate it. I hope that she will be emboldened to do so because only last week the joint chiefs in the United States and the head of the Livermore laboratory, which is responsible for conducting the star wars research, both said that such a broadening and such tests in space were unnecessary.
Having given a fair tribute to the Prime Minister's important changes in position, one thing still sticks out like a sore thumb—what the Russians call her nuclearphilia, her obsessive belief that nuclear weapons are both necessary and good. Here, as Mr. Arbatov, the Soviet foreign affairs spokesman, said, she was a good deal less forward looking than President Reagan, who believes that nuclear weapons are immoral and uncivilised and only yesterday described them as "agents of annihilation", and who wants to eliminate them and simultaneously to reduce the gap between the two sides in conventional weapons.
There is one point upon which I hope the Minister will, in reply, comment. The Prime Minister on Thursday, in her statement to the House, said that she thought that President Reagan had dropped his objective of abolishing all strategic nuclear missiles in the next 10 years. Two days after the Prime Minister met President Reagan, Mr. Shultz made a long and impressive speech on American defence and disarmament policy in which he strongly argued in


favour of the President's proposal to abolish all strategic nuclear missiles and explained precisely why he was in favour of that.
I see from the frantic colloquy between the great men on the Government Front Bench that they are quite disturbed that she should have said that, but they missed it during the helter-skelter rambling to which we were treated at Question Time on Thursday.

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: The right hon. Gentleman is contemplating a world where certain nuclear weapons have been removed and he is contemplating the size of conventional forces. Does he believe that any money that is saved from the abolition of the Trident system should be spent on improving our conventional forces, or is he also contemplating a reduction in expenditure on conventional forces?

Mr. Healey: I am grateful for that intervention. My right hon. Friend and I have made clear for many months that we plan to spend all the money saved on Trident and Polaris—which we estimate, after cancellation costs, at about £8,000 million—on strengthening our conventional forces, whom the present Prime Minister is robbing of 30 per cent. of the equipment promised to them over the next few years in order to pay for the Trident programme. I hope that when we come to vote on these matters, perhaps in the Defence Estimates, we can guarantee that we shall have the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) in the Lobby with us.
We must move on the question of the Prime Minister's attachment to nuclear weapons if we are to have any success in the negotiations on the shorter range nuclear missiles, to which the Foreign Secretary referred in his speech. The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister claim that the Soviets have a superiority of 9:1 in these missiles—a characteristic inflation of the NATO estimate, which is only 6:1 and which has been repeated several times in the past week.
The question I put to the Foreign Secretary is: if it makes sense to eliminate a 3:1 superiority in Soviet medium range nuclear weapons, and if it makes sense—and I agree with the Foreign Secretary that it does—to aim at a global zero option because it is much easier to verify the elimination of all weapons of this category than to verify that only 100 are left on each side, surely the right way to deal with the shorter range nuclear weapons is to aim at a zero option there as well.
I find it difficult to understand why the Prime Minister is aiming to freeze a 9: 1 Soviet superiority rather than getting rid of the lot. It is true, as the Foreign Secretary said, that he would like the right for America to match the number of Soviet shorter range missiles. However, the United States has already made it clear that if it matches the Soviets, it is not prepared to pay. The Europeans would have to pay. The German Government have made it clear that they are not prepared to receive an increased number of those missiles at the very moment when medium range missiles are being withdrawn. It is difficult to explain any reasoning behind the Government's attachment to keeping shorter range missiles in Europe where they admit the Russians have an enormous superiority. The only explanation is nuclearphilia. That is

a psychological disorder that has been described at some length by Soviet spokesmen since they were exposed to its consequences during the Prime Minister's visit.
In so far as the Government ever attempt a reason for not agreeing to the zero option on shorter range forces, it is the inferiority of the West in conventional weapons. However, the Prime Minister regularly and grossly exaggerates the Soviet superiority. There was an example of that only the other day when the American ambassador told us that the Soviet tank superiority in Europe was 2: 1. The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister keep telling us that it is 3: 1. The truth is that on this matter—as in the laughable attempts of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to cost Labour's spending programmes—the Government first think of a number and then double it.
According to the Americans' estimate in terms of armoured division equivalents, the Soviet Warsaw pact superiority to NATO is only 1·2:1. According to NATO, between 10 per cent. and 15 per cent. of Soviet forces in Eastern Europe are intended to garrison the East European countries rather than to take part in any operations against Western Europe.
The most astonishing feature of the Government's position is that they claim that there is a Soviet superiority in conventional weapons and that that is why we need nuclear weapons, but they plan a 30 per cent. cut in the new conventional weapons for the British Army, Navy and Air Force. A tank commander has already resigned his commission because his tanks do not have enough spares even to conduct an exercise, never mind to fight a battle. Similar remarks were made by the recently retired Chief of the Defence Staff, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, in another place the other day.
The best way to match Soviet superiority is not for us to build up—although I told the hon. Member for Bexleyheath that the Labour party plans to build up with the money that we would save on nuclear weapons—but for both sides to build down. In its communique following the meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Warsaw pact in Moscow a fortnight ago, the Warsaw pact offered a cut of 25 per cent. in the forces on both sides over the next three years and, most importantly, suggested that there should be additional cuts in areas where one side or the other currently has a superiority. We heard nothing from the Foreign Secretary this afternoon about the Government's approach to the negotiations of reductions and achieving equivalents by negotiation in conventional forces in Europe. Indeed, as I understand it, NATO has been wrestling with how to deal with that problem for nearly a year and so far has completely failed to reach agreement within the Alliance.
I predict with a little more confidence than the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen), the leader of the Social Democratic party—where is he, by the way?—that it is very likely that Mr. Gorbachev during his visit to Czechoslovakia at the end of this week will announce new Soviet proposals in those areas.
It is common ground between the Foreign Secretary and myself that the advent of Mr. Gorbachev, Glasnost Perestroika and the other new developments in the Soviet Union, present the world with a golden opportunity to make progress on the issues which, for so long, have divided East and West. Indeed, the Prime Minister in an uncharacteristic burst of poetry said in Moscow :
There is a tide in the affairs of men".


It is amazing what that little touch of Mikhail in the night did for her. The German Foreign Minister rightly said that it would be a crime against history if the West was to reject this opportunity. It would be a tragedy for Britain if our Prime Minister was to reject the opportunity for the sake of buying a new nuclear missile system that Britain cannot afford, which the United States may not provide and which certainly no British Government would ever use.
The Foreign Secretary referred in his opening remarks to the important disagreement between Britain and Japan. He would agree with me that the threat of an incredible act is not a credible deterrent. We had a small example of that when we threatened to shoot our left foot off if we did not get what we wanted from the Japanese by forcing those Japanese firms that we enticed into London at great expense to set up shop in Paris or Frankfurt. The threat to start a nuclear war is a much less credible threat. The threat of suicide is not credible. However, the Prime Minister is not threatening suicide; she is threatening the destruction of civilisation and maybe of mankind. I hope that the wonderful things that we have seen happening to the Prime Minister in Moscow can be carried that little bit further and that she will reflect again on the obstacles that she is placing in the way of the kind of agreement that is now possible with the Soviet Union. I hope that she will join the great majority of mankind who want to get rid of nuclear weapons and establish a new system of security for the whole world.

Mr. Francis Pym: What an unworthy speech we have just heard. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) fancies himself as an expert on foreign affairs, but through much of his speech he trivialised matters of the utmost concern to millions of people. He showed, if I may say so, that the time has come for him to make way for a more serious figure.
One of the misfortunes of contemporary British politics is the absence of a broad all-party approach to foreign affairs and defence. The absence of that weakens the British position and the West as a whole. Of course, both sides of the House have different versions of that misfortune. However, happily the people will be asked very soon to make their choice. I do not believe that they will find that choice too difficult. In the meantime, I have nothing but contempt for the partisan deviations from common sense in which the Opposition indulge in their contortions. That damages our security and does them no good.
The visit of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to Moscow was of exceptional importance for two reasons. First, if I may put it this way, it was the laying of the foundation stone of the structure to create a broad dialogue with the Soviet Union. Such a dialogue has always been a prerequisite for reaching negotiated agreements. Of course, there are others such as adequate strengths, resolution and so forth. Whatever our differences, there must be some framework for a practical coexistence and that need has been given a fresh impetus by my right hon. Friend's visit. How that will develop remains to be seen, but at any rate it has provided a powerful boost.
The second reason for the importance of the visit is its bearing on the reforms now being undertaken in the Soviet Union—whatever they may turn out to be. The visit has

dramatically demonstrated the enormous importance that we in the West attach to these reforms, and no one could have conveyed that message as well as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
My approach to the whole question of East-West relations starts from an assessment of the balance of strength. That balance is heavily in favour of the West in terms of human and physical resources, philosophy and ideals, technological skills and economic attainments. In only two areas has the Soviet Union an advantage. Its first advantage is in the military field, where it has superiority in conventional, chemical and nuclear capabilities. It is this superiority that is the reason for the Soviet Union's superpower status.
The Soviet Union's second advantage is its propaganda capability. I have never doubted that the people of the Soviet Union want peace just as much as we do, but there is no way of reaching them. They hear only what the Kremlin decides to tell them, except on this occasion when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was enabled to break through. The Soviet Union's total control of the media is in stark contrast to the position in the West, where at times there seems to be equal time for Soviet views as for our own.
The balance overall is strongly in our favour and that is one reason why the outlook from Moscow is so chilling. In that case, the best way to deal with the situation is, first, to ensure that our deterrent is at all times effective and in good shape. That is our shield which will deter attack and maintain peace. We must make whatever progress we can in negotiations and then get on with our business calmly and patiently while waiting for the inexorable movement of events and the rise of new generations in the Soviet Union which will cause changes in their system to occur.
I have always thought it a mistake to hurl abusive and futile rhetoric across the world. What had to be achieved was some co-existence with the Soviet Union, not accepting any of its ideals that are abhorrent to us but establishing a relationship which, in so far as it might have any effect in the Soviet Union, would encourage change. In essence, that was what the policy of containment was intended to achieve but it has had virtually no success so far. Now there are signs of change, but it is much too soon to assess them.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East talked about a historic turning point. That may or may not turn out to be the case. There is no change in the basic aims of the Soviet Union. It will not suddenly become a democracy or abandon its objectives. There is as yet no shred of evidence for that. It has released some detainees, but there is no suggestion from the Soviet Union that detention was wrong in the first place. The gap in defence capability continues to widen in favour of the Soviet Union, contrary to what many people wish to think. However, there is a change in style, which the Prime Minister's visit proved, and in due course that change can be judged.
Another change is also possible, and it is an improvement in the Soviet economy. Clearly, Mr. Gorbachev understands what has to be changed and is making a major effort to change it. There must still be some doubt about how successful he will be. He faces considerable internal opposition, and there is no change so far in the existing highly bureaucratic system, and no inducement for individual enterprise. Some commentators give him only a 50:50 chance. We shall see. If he could bring about a significant improvement in the economy he


would achieve a notable change in the balance of strength between East and West. Perhaps it would not turn the tables, but nothing else would bring about so great a change in the Soviet Union.
I suspect that Mr. Gorbachev has another policy objective and it is to withdraw from Afghanistan. I think that has been confirmed by what my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary said in his speech. That objective is not for ideological reasons but because Mr. Gorbachev is not winning the war. It was, of course, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that turned world opinion so strongly against Russia. Whether there will be a withdrawal is an open question, but until there is a very large blot stains the Soviet record, as does the Berlin wall and many other things.
If the Soviet Union succeeds in sustaining openness, improving the economy and withdrawing from Afghanistan, there will be a big impact on the international scene and on people's attitude to the Soviet Union. In that event we would be entering a new phase in world affairs. That would be even more the case if the Soviet Union took a new and more relaxed attitude to eastern Europe. I have always believed that one of our major strategic objectives is to keep hope alive in the countries of eastern Europe, the hope that one day they will regain their right to decide their future for themselves. The division in Europe is a violence to our cultural and historical tradition which in the long run cannot endure. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary on his attention to eastern Europe. I had planned to make those trips myself and I am delighted that he has taken such a great deal of trouble about it.
Already we are facing a time when the Soviet Union is projecting itself quite differently and is likely to be perceived quite differently. We must be prepared for that and understand the implications, because such a change has important policy implications and I should like to mention a few. The first of those, which I have already mentioned, is that until we see the actual strength and significance of the change we must remain hopeful but sceptical. Proof or lack of it will come soon enough and we must be realistic about it. Secondly, there must be consistency of policy throughout the West as a whole. That comes from a sustained purpose backed by the necessary means to carry it out. Of course, the Soviet Union can do this quite easily, because its purpose is pursued with the ruthlessness that is characteristic of its whole system. The West has an equally clear purpose.

Mr. Martin Flannery: The right hon. Gentleman says he wants to see actions. Is he thinking in terms of actions coming from only one side, or does he mean actions from, perhaps, the United States on, for instance, star wars?

Mr. Pym: I am speaking particularly about the changes that we see taking place in the Soviet Union. The West has an equally clear purpose. It is to prevent the spread of Communism and to convince the Third world of the superiority in every way of our system, the essence of which is the freedom of the individual. We must convince them that in our parliamentary democracies all views count. Of course, that makes it a more difficult system to manage, but it is a far stronger hand to play.
Consistency of policy requires better co-ordination of national views. That can be difficult when national interests conflict or when domestic political interests conflict with international needs. Of course the national interest is of paramount importance to every Government, but so is the international interest, which can sometimes become subsumed by domestic political pressure. A dangerous contemporary example that was mentioned by my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary is the threat of protectionism, which is a form of nationalism. The politics of protectionism may be understandable and its emotion is very human, but any lapse into the trap of protectionism can only lead to impoverishment and the undermining of security.
The world is interdependent, and internationalism must be nurtured in every democracy. The work done today by major international bodies such as GATT, the IMF, the European Community and many more is indispensable and has been made possible only by the confidence in international solutions that was shown after the war. Our task is to carry that forward and build on it.
The next aspect of policy with which I should like to deal is the allocation of resources. Every country is experiencing the enormous cost of defence, the Soviet Union no less than the rest of us. The total defence of the West could be bought at a lower cost if the political constraints against rationalisation and integration could be overcome. Even if they were, the allocation of resources would remain a key issue.
We need to reconsider whether collectively we commit enough resources to preventive action to reduce the risks of subversions and regional conflict. The Soviet Union continues to pursue its nefarious aims around the world with considerable skill. The question arises as to what extent countries such as Nicaragua and Cuba are tools of the Soviet Union or to what extent they are free agents. They are not free, in the sense that they need a great deal of aid, which can only come from Communist sources. The revolutionary zeal that they exhibit cannot be manufactured by Moscow; there is an indigenous element. The idea that all subversion is being done by surrogates is misleading because it obscures the fact that a movement for revolution must already exist in such countries. It would be more realistic to say that such conflicts are not only aspects of East-West competition, but that they also have indigenous causes and consequences.
The policy objective, therefore, is to deny the Soviet Union the opportunity to make such trouble, which is, to say the least, a formidable task and one that encompasses all aspects of international relations.
I shall take one example, which was mentioned by my right hon and learned Friend—the debt crisis. To leave that unresolved is sure to lead to disruption of some kind. It is contrary to the policy objective. We know that efforts are being made at the moment by the Group of Five to solve this problem, but it is nowhere near to solving it yet. Finance and loans have been provided on a massive scale without foreseeing the consequences, such as that most of those countries have little or, in some cases, virtually no means of repayment, and also the unforeseen consequence of the rise in population. Mexico, Kenya and many other countries are such examples.
What has been our response? It has been an insistence on sterner economic discipline. That is fine as far as it goes, but there are obvious political limits to this, which have already been reached in some countries. The only way to


obtain more economic discipline is to accompany it with more help. I am glad that the Government are now providing that help, but few others are. I do not see how else the West can create an environment which reduces the opportunities for subversion. I should like to see the annual summit of the seven industrialised nations address this question far more directly and comprehensively than it has thus far because it has a profound bearing on the security of the West.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the all-party committee on overseas development is issuing a pamphlet on the subject of debt, which is to be published on 5 May, and which puts forward some serious suggestions from which the British Government can take initiatives to try to produce a solution to the indebtedness of the poorest and Latin American countries?

Mr. Pym: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The Foreign Secretary is doing all that he can. However, it is a major international question. What concerned me for a long time, including when I was Foreign Secretary, was that the issue did not receive the degree of attention that it required.
My final point concerns the supreme importance of keeping our electorate fully informed on East-West relations and of maintaining its expectations at whatever level the circumstances justify. Public opinion is of crucial importance. It is the bottom line of our defence, which is why the lack of all-party agreement on this matter is so dangerous.
If the Sovet Union is beginning to appreciate the deep significance of public opinion, that is a huge advance. Even if it is, the process will take decades to develop. The changes that we are beginning to see must not be exaggerated; they must be encouraged and we must be patient and see how they develop.
The sheer complexity of arms control negotiations must constantly be brought home to people, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister have done, otherwise too much will be expected too soon, which will lead to disappointment and frustration. That must be avoided at all costs.
What is required is the utmost dedication to the negotiations in Geneva, Vienna and every other forum until agreements which are acceptable and verifiable to both sides are achieved, however long or short a time that takes.
In the meantime, we must maintain our deterrent in full working order at all times and at whatever level the circumstances of the time require. We must build with enthusiasm and imagination the best working relationship that we can with the Soviet Union and hope that it will be reciprocated.
These are just some of the main considerations for the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister to keep in mind in the immediate future. There is no doubt in my mind that the world is entering a phase when the challenges and opportunities are enormous. It is a huge test of statesmanship to ensure that those challenges are met and that those opportunities are taken.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: During the exchanges which took place last Thursday after the Prime

Minister had reported on her visit to Russia I observed that a radical transformation in the defence and foreign policies of this country was in progress. I had the impression, after I had said that, that a number of hon. Members were puzzled as to what I was referring to, but that the Prime Minister was not one of those who were in any difficulty. In the recent past, I will not say that she helped to bring about that transformation, but her actions and words have illustrated and strikingly underlined it.
For the past 30 years the defence and therefore the foreign policy of this country have been based on the nuclear hypothesis, which is otherwise known as the concept of the nuclear deterrent. It asserts that the superiority in conventional armaments of Russia and her allies over ourselves and our allies is so great that the Soviet Union is now and has been during the last generation prevented from engulfing western Europe in war only by the certainty that the United States, in such an event, would resort to the use of its nuclear arsenal.
The nuclear hypothesis has gone though a number of phases, in each of which it has endeavoured to cope with its main difficulty, which is that of its sheer incredibility. Its earliest phase was that of the tripwire, which was the simplest form of the nuclear hypothesis—the first toecap of a Russian soldier which crosses the line dividing Europe will be the signal for the nuclear holocaust to be unchained by the United States. That was incredible in itself because of the lack of balance between the nature of a perceived event and the response to it, as well as the difficulty of assuming that the United States would so closely identify itself with a certain state of affairs in western Europe as to be prepared, and at all stages visibly ready, to take that step for the sake of it.
Progressively the tripwire had to be modified. The two days' interval was lengthened to five days. Then, it was thought to be quite a good idea for us to have a battle or two and see how we would get on following a Russian invasion. An American SACEUR even had the thought that it would be a good plan, in the throes of a Russian invasion, to counter-attack the country from which that invasion had been launched.
But the biggest development which took place in the theory of the nuclear deterrent, however it originally came about, was the introduction of the intermediate range ballistic missile.
The beauty of the intermediate range ballistic missile was that whereas previously the Soviet Union and the United States, facing one another across the infernal chessboard, had been equally at risk by any move which they made upon it. By means of the intermediate range ballistic missile it was possible to suppose that they could make at any rate gambits in the deadly game without involving their own existence and safety or the survival of the populations which they represented. So, thanks not least to the intermediate range ballistic missile, we lived, until recently, with reasonable contentment under the umbrella, not of the nuclear deterrent, but of the nuclear hypothesis. It is, incidentally, a hypothesis of extreme convenience and, for Treasury Ministers, of extreme advantage, in that if one can believe that one's enemy is kept at bay by the threat of someone else using nuclear armaments that is about the cheapest defence policy available.
This delightful state of affairs has in recent years been disturbed by two events. The first is star wars. Star wars raised the terrible prospect that there might be an effective


means of neutralising the inter-continental ballistic missile, whereby the two great giants who held what had become to be seen as the balance of terror would contract out of the game altogether : the deterrent would be switched off by the invulnerability of the two providers of the mutual terror.
Thus, it was with great difficulty and not without the inducement of a number of valuable research and development contracts that the United States European allies were brought along to acquiesce in the United States engaging in the rational activity of discovering whether there was after all some defence against nuclear attack. Even so, they were only quieted by the apparent assurance obtained from the United States that it was only engaged in experiment and research, and that, if there were any danger of effective protection being devised, of course the United States would not avail itself of that protection without the agreement of its European allies. That was the first recent event which shook to its foundations the nuclear deterrent with which we had lived these last 30 years.
The second and more recent event was the threat to the intermediate ballistic missile itself. This was sprung upon us by our old friend Gorbachev with his suggestion to the United States, "Let's both scrap them, old boy; let's have the zero option"—I do not know why it is called the zero option but it is fashionable to call it that. "Let's get rid of the intermediate range ballistic missile altogether." Terror then spread through the ranks of the European end of the NATO Alliance. What were they to do with their nuclear deterrent because they would lose the possibility of a credible nuclear gambit sufficient to provide for their defence and would be back again staring in the face the basic inconceivability of United States suicide as the response to Russian aggression.
The negotiations and observations of the Prime Minister on that subject in the last few weeks, and particularly during and subsequent to her visit to Russia, have been particularly revealing. The Prime Minister was reluctant to see what was called the zero option. Logically—given her assumptions—she wanted something considerably less far-reaching. She therefore said, "If we are to lose the intermediate range ballistic missile, we cannot stop there; as soon as possible, and preferably within any such negotiation, we must do something about short range ballistic missiles." But the most significant point was when she went on to say that we must aim at a conventional forces balance. So, after all our journeys of the last 30 or 40 years, the disappearance of the intermediate range ballistic missile revived the old question of the supposed conventional imbalance between the Russian alliance and the North Atlantic Alliance. The rabbit had gone back down the hole from which it originally emerged.

Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): The right hon. Gentleman's premises are interesting, but they are not quite up to date. The spectrum of deterrence will not be dramatically altered by the zero option if we take into account that submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched missile systems will remain. The right hon. Gentleman says that if intermediate range ballistic missiles go we shall not be able to inflict massive destruction on

centres of population in the Soviet Union. That is not so, since strategic deterrents will remain and many medium-range systems of other types will remain.

Mr. Powell: I was obviously not clear. My point was that with the disappearance of the intermediate range ballistic missiles from the picture we should be back again with the strategic exchange—that very exchange between the heartlands of the two nuclear giants which underlay the inherent incredibility of the whole nuclear hypothesis.
The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson), however, is in line with the Prime Minister—I make no complaint about that—for the Prime Minister arrived at a remarkable conclusion. She said :
we simply will not stand for the denuclearisation of Europe."—[Official Report, 2 April 1987: Vol. 113, c. 1229.]
What a remarkable conclusion. After all these endeavours at disarmament as a detente, the Prime Minister is forced by the inherent implications of British defence policy into a declared assertion that she
will not stand for the denuclearisation of Europe".
The reason is obvious. It is because she is confronting the collapse, or evaporation into the upper air, of the nuclear hypothesis itself. That hypothesis never had a realistic basis. It never was a rational assumption. It is not entirely accidental that closer contact between this country and the Soviet Union has helped to mature that perception.
The Prime Minister constantly asserts that the nuclear weapon has kept the peace in Europe for the last 40 years. It is an article of faith repeated by her in a manner that shows how conscious she is of the weakening foundations upon which it now rests, not only in people's minds generally, but in her own perception. After all, she has, for the first time, formed some conception of the nature of that extraordinary people, the Russian nation, whom our difficulty in understanding is exceeded only by their difficulty in understanding us.
Let us make a test. Let us go back to the middle 1950s or to the end of the 1940s, and let us suppose that nuclear power had never been invented, that no such advance had taken place in science or technology, but that everything else was the same. I assert that in those circumstances there would still not have been a Russian invasion of western Europe. What has prevented that from happening was not the nuclear hypothesis, not the incredible threat of an incredible act—I use words already used this afternoon by the Opposition spokesman—but the fact that the Soviet Union knew the consequences of such a move, consequences which would have followed whether or not there were 300,000 American troops stationed in Europe.
The Soviet Union knew that such an action on its part would have led to a third world war—a long war, bitterly fought, a war which in the end the Soviet Union would have been likely to lose on the same basis and in the same way as the corresponding war was lost by Napoleon, by the Emperor Wilhelm and by Adolf Hitler.
It was that fear, that caution, that understanding, that perception on the part of Russia and its leaders that was the real deterrent against Russia committing the utterly irrational and suicidal act of plunging into a third world war in which the Soviet Union would be likely to find itself confronting a combination of the greatest industrial and economic powers in the world.
There is no particular mystery about the fact that peace has existed in Europe over the past 40 years. It is due to the fact that the Soviet Union, and indeed the Soviet Union's enemies, have not intended to face the


consequences of a third world war waged between the major powers on earth. In the minds of the Russians the inevitable commitment of the United States in such a war would have come not directly or necessarily from the stationing of American marines in Germany, but, as it came in the previous two struggles, from the ultimate involvement of the United States in any war determining the future of Europe.
There never has been a rational basis for that upon which we have founded the defence policy of this country for the past 35 years, and the defence policy of this country is necessarily linked ultimately to its foreign policy. For of course a logically irresistible conclusion followed from the creed that our safety depended upon the nuclear capability of the United States and its willingness to commit that capability in certain events. If that was so—and we assured ourselves for 40 years that it was—the guiding principle of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom had to be that, in no circumstances, must it depart from the basic insights of the United States and that any demand placed in the name of defence upon the United Kingdom by the United States was a demand that could not be resisted. Such was the rigorous logic of the nuclear deterrent, a logic under which not merely the defence, but the foreign policy of this country has lived for more than a generation.
It was in obedience to it—we are indebted again to the Prime Minister for her candour; sometimes it is the candour of the Prime Minister which is most revealing as well as her choice of words—that the Prime Minister said, in the context of the use of American bases in Britain to launch an aggressive attack on Libya, that it was "inconceivable" that we could have refused a demand placed upon this country by the United States. The Prime Minister supplied the reason why : she said it was because we depend for our liberty and freedom upon the United States. Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it.
A few days ago I was reminded, when reading a new biography of Richard Cobden, that he once addressed a terrible sentence of four words to this House of Commons. He said to hon. Members : "You have been Englishmen." The strength of those words lies in the perfect tense, with the implication that they were so no longer but had within themselves the power to be so again.
I believe that we now have the opportunity, with the dissolution of the nightmare of the nuclear theory, for this country once again to have a defence policy that accords with the needs of this country as an island nation, and to have a foreign policy which rests upon a true, undistorted view of the outside world. Above all, we have the opportunity to have a foreign policy that is not dictated from outside to this country, but willed by its people. That day is coming. It may be delayed, but it will come.

Sir Carol Mather: I hope that the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) will forgive me if I do not follow his line of argument, because I am on a slightly different tack. I think that this afternoon is an opportunity to try to look at some of the origins of the problems that we face today in foreign affairs. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary said that, in common with the Russians, we should think long, and

I believe that we should think longer than we usually do. Therefore, I make no apology for going back in time to consider some of the problems.
First, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary on their extremely successful visit to Moscow. There has been a great change of atmosphere between ourselves and the Soviet Union, indeed between the West and the Soviet Union, and that change has been greatly enhanced by this recent visit. I believe that we are witnessing the biggest change in atmosphere in the postwar period. I can think of no other period when we were involved in such dialogue with Russia other than the year of 1944 when we were allies with the Soviet Union, and the Germans and their collaborators were our enemies.
Of course, things changed in 1945 when we began to see the true nature of the Russian bear. We learnt this at the Yalta conference when we were trying to deal with the intractable problems of the reoccupation of Germany by the allied powers, free elections in Poland and the repatriation of our prisoners, both Russian and British. I wish to dwell on the problem of repatriation for a few moments because that problem has not gone away.
The reasons why it was so important for us to come to an agreement at Yalta were, above all, that we had 50,000 allied prisoners in Russian hands. We also had a continuing war with Japan, which looked likely to continue for another two years—it was important to have the Russians on our side—and there were vast problems in Germany and the occupied territories. There were millions of emaciated people in Germany and Austria whom we were trying to feed as well as vast numbers of refugees and large numbers of displaced persons—Poles, Hungarians and so on.
Then, the urgent problem was to repatriate the people hack to their homelands while we had enough food for them. I had experience of this because I was with the northern armies and was liaison officer to Montgomery. I was working on those problems, visiting the camps and trying to report on how we would repatriate all the people. It was an immense problem.
In the north there were 20 million Germans and displaced people to look after and to feed. Housing had been destroyed and the standard of health was low. There were 2·5 million German prisoners of war and 1 million displaced persons—Russians, Poles, Hungarians and so on. In West Berlin alone there were 3 million people whom we had to feed, not from the hinterland, but from the western zone of Germany. There was one policy alone—everyone must go home. It was the same in Austria.
In addition to such problems, we were faced by the frightening attitude adopted by the Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin. At that time our future was indeed precarious. In the biography of Eden written by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) Churchill is reported as saying that the situation was more dangerous in 1945 than it was in 1939.
By far the most important factor in our discussions was, of course, the prisoners—the return of our prisoners to us and vice versa in the case of the Russians. My noble Friend Lord Barber wrote an interesting letter. He was a prisoner of war in Russian hands in East Germany, overrun by the Russians. He made an important point which was reported in a debate in the House of Lords in 1976. He was a member of an air crew which had been captured. His letter said:


We realised at the time that we were being kept as hostages until the return of the Russians, who had been liberated by the British. If the Government had refused to return the Russians, I do not doubt that most of us would have accepted our unhappy lot as being a necessary consequence of the aftermath of war!
That was a noble sentiment, but it did not wash at home. It would not have been in accordance with British public opinion at the time when the main desire was to get everyone back home. That is the background to events in Austria in 1945.
My first contact in Normandy after we landed on D plus one was, strangely enough, with a Cossack unit. They were among the first German troops that I met. I was having my breakfast. They were more surprised at seeing me than I was at seeing them. Those were the people with whom we were faced in many of the German units.
Under the Yalta agreement we repatriated about 45,000 Wehrmacht Cossacks to the Soviet Union. Inevitably, White Russians were included in those numbers. If we had not maintained the Yalta agreement we would have been in dire trouble. At the same time, major units of Russians and Ukranians were spirited away—the Ukranian division of some 10,000 men and the White Russians Schutz Corps of some 4,500 men.
That has been the subject of two books by Mr. Nicholas Tolstoi which contain some pathetic stories. But untold so far have been the successful efforts by anonymous pimpernels to thwart the Soviet intentions and free those people to the West. I have no personal axe to grind in this, but I should like to see historical justice done. Tolstoi, in his book, "Minister and the Massacres", accuses the then Minister resident in those parts, Harold Macmillan, of conspiring to send those people to their deaths. That is the clear implication of what he said.
There is plenty of opinion by the author in that book, but very little hard fact. It casts a slur on the War Cabinet of those days and on the commanders and staff in the field as well as on our allies who were in full agreement with the policy. I utterly reject the theory that the late Lord Stockton was involved in a devious plot.
What was the outcome? Stalin insisted upon his pound of flesh and we had to send the Soviet citizens back. Many of them were shot or perished in the gulags. There were no free elections in Poland, as we had agreed, and many of the smaller old European countries were swallowed up by Stalin.
But this last outcome, in particular, could have been avoided. Unfortunately, there was a dispute between the British and the Americans about our policy in the final stages of advance. The Americans favoured a broad front advance and we favoured a narrow one, as advocated by Montgomery. I am convinced that we could have been in Berlin by Christmas 1944 if we had adhered to the narrow front strategy. As it was, we halted and waited for the Russians to move up. We could also have occupied Czechoslovakia. I remember being sent to Czechoslovakia in 1946 by Montgomery to see the commander there. I talked to the people and I remember how fearful they were of being swallowed up by the Russians, as, indeed, they were. If we had continued with our advance, Europe would have been a different place today.
There are two more cautionary tales that I would like to tell and they concern the middle east. The Attlee Government ordered the evacuation of Palestine in

October 1947. It was to be evacuated by May the following year. I and my chums who were there were told to pack up and go home. We had been keeping the peace there and we were astounded by that drastic and ill-considered decision.
As it turned out, the Arabs did not see off the Jews. The Jews were trained for war because they had been fighting us, and the Arabs, unfortunately, were seen off and lost their lands. That has set off a kind of political Chernobyl, whose noxious fumes are still poisoning the world today. We have only to look at worldwide terrorism, events in the Lebanon and the rising of the Arab Jihad to see what a pot we stirred up in those days.
My final tale concerns the events in the Persian gulf a few years ago. When the Conservative Government came to power in 1970 it was virtually a fait accompli that we had to leave the Persian gulf. That had been decided by the previous Labour Government. I want to ask some rhetorical questions to which there are no answers, but they should still be considered.
If we had retained our presence in the Persian gulf and had been in communion with the Arab rulers who were friendly towards us, would the oil crisis have taken quite the same form that it took? Would OPEC have arisen in the form that it did? Would the Shah have fallen if we had been there to hold his hand? Would the American hostages have been taken by the following Government? Would, indeed, the Iran-Iraq war have taken place?
I hope that recounting those experiences gives some clues to the problems that we are facing today. This is, in a way, my maiden speech, but, in case it is also my valedictory one, I wanted to put that on the record.

Mr. A. J. Beith: It will be a pity if the hon. Member for Esher (Sir C. Mather) has, indeed, just made his valedictory speech because he spoke from personal experience on matters which I hope the House will some day debate at greater length. This is not the opportunity to go into them, but it would be instructive if the House were to debate that period and some of the things that happened.
That period teaches us something about what can go wrong in Government in such circumstances. It cannot have been right that the Government's policies should have been so distorted in the event that people, many of whom were not even citizens of the Soviet Union, were sent back there to certain death or to long periods of imprisonment in camps in which they eventually died. It is also instructive because it tells us something about what the Soviet system is like when used in the malevolent way in which Stalin used it. It tells us a great deal about the evils of that system. but that is a matter for another occasion.
I said last week that there would be a general and genuine welcome for the outcome of the Prime Minister's visit to Moscow, and that has proved to be the case. I do not believe, as she said, that the world is significantly safer as a result of the visit, although it could become so if the right steps now follow from it. It certainly changed the Prime Minister's perception of the Soviet Union. It was remarkable to hear some of the things that she said when she returned.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) was obviously struck by that and made much of it, although, having made his speech, he fled instantly from


the scene to visit the far east. When he made so much of the Prime Minister's conversion, I had some sympathy with what he was saying, but he did nothing to indicate whether some similar process or a different process explained his conversion from the belief that a nuclear deterrent had to be stationed on British soil to the view that there should be no such thing and that all nuclear weapons should be removed from Britain. At some point he may explain how that came about. Perhaps it will lead us to be more sympathetic to the view advanced by the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell). The right hon. Member for Leeds, East owes it to us to explain how that conversion took place—whether it was through talking to a foreign leader, or at a Labour party back room discussion, I do not know.
The Prime Minister said that we should support Mr. Gorbachev in his great endeavour. That was a remarkable phrase for her to use after the years of megaphone diplomacy. She also said that if he gave her his word she would trust him. I think that that was a rather naive phrase. It is an understandable reaction to Mr. Gorbachev, whom I met, in company with the right hon. Member for Leeds, East and Lord Whitelaw, a year ago, in what turned out to be a dress rehearsal for Mrs. Thatcher's visit. We were taken round the same places on the standard tour. It is a naive remark because it underestimates the extent to which Mr. Gorbachev is part of a system. He is attempting in certain ways to change that system, but we do not know how far he is able or willing to change it. Most of us admire what he is trying to do and what he has achieved so far, but we must be a little cautious about the type of deals that we do with him; the best basis on which to form agreements is one on which there is realism on both sides. Both sides must accept that an agreement that has been reached safeguards their interests, and that sacrifices must be made by both sides. It is on that basis, and not on the trust of words alone, that matters must proceed.
So far as I can glean from what the Prime Minister said, and from her reported remarks, I believe that she got it about right on some of the major issues, including that of intermediate nuclear forces. I was genuinely worried about what she said before she went to Moscow, when she seemed to be ruling out an intermediate nuclear forces deal that was not directly linked with short-range missiles or human rights issues.
I am glad that the Prime Minister raised human rights issues in Moscow—the position of Jews wanting to emigrate, the position of Christians, and issues of general political rights. By raising those issues, the Prime Minister did us a service.
It was also sensible for her to raise our concerns about short-range missiles. However, to link either of those issues with the achievement of an agreement on intermediate nuclear forces would be to condemn the deal. There is no way in which progress on them could objectively be ascertained. One cannot ascertain objectively whether sufficient progress on human rights has been made to allow a deal on intermediate nuclear forces. The linkage is not even a logical one. Still less was it any part of the West's original insistence on the zero-zero option. The Prime Minister's remarks about verification, about follow-on talks on short-range missiles and about allowing the West to match—if it wanted to—the East's numbers were all within the terms of reference of the Soviet leadership's acceptance of the zero-zero option. It

is, by the way, curious at this stage to raise the idea of the West matching the short-range missiles, when we have not attempted to do that in all the years during which we have not been prevented from doing so. So that is a false hare to raise now.
I hope and pray that we shall obtain a deal on intermediate nuclear forces that will help to make the world a safer place. However, I do not agree with all that the Prime Minister said in Moscow. Naturally, we profoundly disagree with her line on star wars—as would Dr. Andrei Sakharov. If that was one of the subjects that she discussed with him, she will have found him a critic of it. It is helpful that the Soviet Union has set aside for a moment its preoccupation with the star wars issue in order to make progress in other areas, but it remains a matter of real concern that the British Government should fuel President Reagan's commitment to the project, which is the subject of so many doubts and criticisms inside the United States.
What a contrast there was between the two visits that were made, respectively, by the leader of the Labour party and the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman's visit was doomed to failure from the start—by its very nature, it could not succeed. It involved trying to persuade the United States that NATO can continue without its bases in the United Kingdom. For the Prime Minister's visit to fail, however, would have been both difficult and foolish. However, she took her opportunity well, and succeeded.
The two leaders are alike in one respect : they are both, in one sense at least, unilateralists. The one believes that Britain can achieve general disarmament by acting alone: the other believes that British nuclear weapons should for ever be excluded, even from multilateral negotiations. The Labour party believes that we can act as if we had neither allies nor enemies, and abandon every category of nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom without first having negotiated to make the world safer. The Prime Minister said that she could not conceive of a position in which British or European nuclear weapons would be negotiated away, even if the superpowers negotiated away all their nuclear weapons. Both Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev have explicitly stated that that is their aim.
The Prime Minister told the leader of the Labour party that one could not build one's defence policies on dreams, and most of us would agree with that. The leader of the Labour party was wrong, not in having dreams, but in building his defence policy on the assumption that they had already been realised. To have no dreams, vision or ambitions, as the Prime Minister's remark suggested, is to throw away any prospect of' achieving great things—
where there is no vision, the people perish".
Without dreams there would have been no desegregation in the United States, no United Nations, and no abolition of slavery. All those were achieved because of vision and ambition. The mistake is to assume that one has achieved one's dream before one has done so. Of course, we should have a vision of a world without nuclear weapons. It should drive us on the step-by-step route to negotiated disarmament.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs mentioned the issue of Afghanistan, which has also, doubtless, been the subject of discussion between the Government and the Prime Minister of Pakistan. I and other hon. Members also had discussions on the issue with him during his visit. There is a sense of optimism abroad.


From Pakistan there are suggestions of a real prospect of movement. From Moscow, one senses that Mr. Gorbachev is serious about getting out of Afghanistan. He suggested as much to us last summer. I believe that to be true for the reasons that the Foreign Secretary advanced. The whole exercise has been a disaster for the Soviet Union from every point of view. It has cost it a great many lives and a great deal of repute in parts of the world in which it hoped to win friends.
The Soviet Union has not yet found terms that it considers would be acceptable for leaving Afghanistan. The attempt to move to a position in which the people of Afghanistan can have a say in their own future and the vast numbers of refugees in Pakistan can return to their country should be a major objective of all the nations that are involved. I hope that the British Government are doing what they can in that direction.
Central America is another area of conflict that we must examine. The American-supported Contra attacks on Nicaragua continue, and unrest persists in a number of neighbouring countries. It is time the Government clarified their position. They have frequently said that their policy is to seek a peaceful solution. As a logical consequence of that, they must be opposed to the arming of groups that are seeking to overthrow the Government of Nicaragua. Why cannot the Government state that? Is it because of their inability to give candid advice to the President of the United States, while so many of his own countrymen are doing precisely that—including most of Congress? The Government should change their stance on the issue.
It is important to argue for human rights in Nicaragua and in many other countries. It is impossible, however, to justify the Contra attacks on the ground that Nicaragua has a distinctively bad record on human rights, as compared with other countries in south and central America. There is no reason why the Government should not argue for more human rights there, but they cannot defend such attacks on that basis.
In the context of human rights, I hope that the Government will examine the proposals that have been put forward by the representatives of three Nicaraguan Opposition parties who are in the United Kingdom now. Senor Godoy of the Independent Liberal party and representatives of other parties have made proposals for an internal political settlement that would make a major difference in Nicaragua and in the attitude to Nicaragua of neighbouring countries. It has common features with the Arias plan, and I hope that the British Government will consider that seriously. There will be hon. Members from all parties in Managua to attend the Inter-Parliamentary Union congress and I have no doubt that the arguments to which I have referred will continue then.
Another major area of conflict that concerns us all is the middle east. The Foreign Secretary said a little about the prospects for a middle east peace conference, which were somewhat advanced by the discussions of the Council of Ministers. Perhaps the Minister of State will say more about that when he replies. I hope that he will tell us what is envisaged and the sort of time scale that will apply. It would be foolish to get down to discussing in this debate the formulae for the representation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and the Foreign Secretary was rightly cautious about that. It is clear, however, that the

voice of the people of Palestine must be heard at the conference, and the PLO has an honoured record of representing that voice over a long period.
We are dealing with a rapidly changing situation. Who would have imagined a time when Israel could be so relaxed about Syria moving into Beirut? Who would have imagined the main opponent of the PLO would not be Israel but an Arab grouping of fanatical ruthlessness? It is a fanatical and ruthless grouping which claims to be pursuing the same cause as the unfortunate Palestinians who are trapped in camps, and it has subjected them to the most awful privations in the process. It is not Israel that has done that.
It is perhaps surprising that after the arguments that we had about Syria last year we can welcome at least some moves on its part. This prompts the question whether Syria will come in from the cold and what steps we shall take to encourage that to happen. I argued strongly over a considerable period that Britain should end its diplomatic relations with Syria in the light of evidence of Syria sponsoring terrorist activity in Britain, but some of those who were involved in that activity are no longer in positions of power in Syria, and Syria is beginning to show signs of a different approach. When I questioned the Prime Minister on these matters, she seemed appalled by the suggestion that we might in future try to restore good relations with Syria. We must recognise that it is an important player on the middle east scene and exercises a great deal of power. We shall have to consider seriously
what Syria's role will be.
In a general foreign affairs debate we must make some reference to South Africa, where elections among the white electorate alone are shortly to take place. There is surely a need for a clearer signal than has yet been given by the British Government and other European Governments, and I believe that it can be given only by applying sanctions against South Africa.
We are engaged in a series of measures against South Africa but it is not polite to call them sanctions. A much clearer signal needs to be given to the white electorate that Britain cannot be described, as the right hon. Member for Leeds, East described the present Government, as the last friend of the apartheid regime. I do not believe that to be the intentional position of the British Government, but I think that they should take clearer measures to ensure that it is not. The situation in some of the neighbouring countries should be exciting the Foreign Secretary's concern as well, not least Angola and Mozambique.
The Philippines, although not the scene of international conflict, are nevertheless an area of real concern. Everyone in the West was relieved to see a transfer of power to a Government with democratic objectives and high ideals for the people of that country, who suffered so much from a corrupt regime. There is a legitimate European interest in the Philippines that is reflected in major aid projects. There are a number of causes for anxiety, and one of them has been expressed by those who are working in the area of development who say that European aid is not taking sufficient account of the non-governmental voluntary organisations and their expertise in the country. If that is the position, I hope that it can be corrected. I hope also that the British Government will make it clear that they are prepared to play their part in relieving the Philippine Government's serious debt problem. There are various


devices and methods that can be used. It is part of the wider international problem and we have a part to play in resolving it.
There are many other subjects that I should like to raise in this general foreign affairs debate. Unfortunately, I cannot do so because many other right hon. and hon. Members wish to participate in it. If the world is to be made a safer place, painstaking work will have to be done at many levels. Apart from bilateral discussions, work will have to be done in the United Nations, including in its peacekeeping role, in the Commonwealth, in the Community and in the international financial community. Britain's interests are in a fairer world, and only a fairer world will be a safer world.

Mr. Julian Amery: The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), the shadow Foreign Secretary, saw fit to criticise the leaders of the Liberal and Social Democratic parties for not being present for this debate. I think that he was right to do so. It is unfortunate that they are not present in this increasingly county-council like Chamber in which foreign affairs are not often discussed. I noticed that the right hon. Gentleman did not have the courtesy to listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym), who was called to speak immediately after the right hon. Member for Leeds, East had resumed his seat.

Mr. George Foulkes: May I repeat what my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said? He explained that he would have liked to stay but that he had arranged earlier to go to Japan and that he had to leave. If the debate had started earlier, my right hon. Friend would have been here. His departure from the Chamber was meant as no discourtesy to the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym), a former Foreign Secretary.

Mr. Amery: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that correction. I should have liked the right hon. Gentleman to he present to hear a shameful admission that I am about to make. Not long ago some of us went over to the north of France to celebrate the landings there. A distinguished Minister of a foreign country approached me with his wife and said to her, "I want to introduce you to Mr. Denis Healey." I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman or the ambassador in Washington should be more worried. Personally, I take it on the jaw.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, I think rightly, that her visit might be a turning point in East-West relations. I think that it has underlined three things. The Soviets have reached a point at which they must put first priority on restructuring their system, which has failed to deliver the goods. Whether austerity in the supply of vodka and other goods will do the trick, I cannot tell. That is a matter for them. I think that they will succeed only if they can get the central European economy, the German economy, to work for them.
It was made clear during the visit of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that the Soviets attach great importance to arms control. That is not from any dislike of weapons but because it has become clear, especially since the American commitment to the strategic defence

initiative, that there is no way in which they can compete with the United States in an arms race and a technological race.
Finally, it has become clear that Mr. Brezhnev's conquests of Angola, Mozambique and finally Afghanistan have failed in the sense that they have been unable in nearly 10 years to consolidate the ground that they took.
We may be on the edge of something similar to the time in the 1920s when Stalin gave up the idea of international revolution and decided to build "Socialism in one country." That did not do the Russian people much good, but it relieved the pressure on the West. Against this background, I think that the phrase "the turning point" may be right.
The opening gambit of the new era of dialogue is the zero-zero option. My impression from talks in Washington are that America would like to see this go ahead. It was their idea originally and the President would like to have an arms agreement if he can get it.
From a European point of view, there is not much in it for us. The arms burden will not be relieved to any extent. It is true that the SS20s will be withdrawn. But even if the agreement is followed by an agreement on shorter range weapons, the fact remains—and I felt that the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) had not taken this fully into account—that the intercontinental missiles of the Soviet Union can perfectly well be trained on European targets without involving the United States.
That brings us back to the situation about which Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was concerned when he asked for the Pershing and cruise missiles to be sent. He said then that if one eliminates the American ability to retaliate from Europe, one will magnify European concern that the Americans might not respond to a Soviet attack on Europe whether nuclear or conventional. And this would give momentum to what has always been an underlying Soviet strategy of decoupling western Europe at best and Germany at least from the United States.
It is possible that we are now facing a new situation of which we should take account.. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of a patriotic German. There would be two options open to him. One is to back away from NATO, not too quickly but gently, and let German finance and industry through joint ventures and so on embark on a policy of helping to restructure eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. He would seek as his aim the reunion of the two Germanies. That would be a respectable aim and in itself—taking the example of Finland where a Conservative Government is about to take office—need not necessarily imply a change in the German constitution.
The alternative would be for West Germany to seek to have its own nuclear weapons. I have friends in Germany in quite high places who would take that view and would argue that 40 years after the war when Germany is making the greatest contributions to the defence of the West in conventional terms—the terms on which the Leader of the Opposition is so keen—it is ridiculous to deny it weapons that another half a dozen countries have already. That is not an immediate issue but it will develop in time.
In putting back to us—it was our proposal originally—the zero-zero option Mr. Gorbachev is reopening the German question and with it the whole question of the peace treaty that has never been concluded. He is opening a Pandora's box. I am not sure what will come out of the box, but the implications for Europe are serious.

Mr. Wilkinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a third option for a patriotic responsible German might be to enhance Franco-German strategic and military cooperation and to ensure that the French force de frappe was more readily available to provide a nuclear response to any Warsaw pact aggression against the Federal Republic? Are not the exercises due to take place in the autumn and the fact that the Force d'Action Rapide is available to deploy in the Federal Republic signals that that option is being explored seriously within the Federal Republic as well as in Paris?

Mr. Amery: My hon. Friend is on to the crucial point. We have to ask ourselves how far the Germans would accept a French or Anglo-French nuclear cover.
There are two lessons we have to draw, not immediately but we must think about it, from the reopening of the German question which the zero-zero option implies. The first is that we and the French must strengthen our own nuclear power along with the French as much as possible and if there is no superpower agreement on short range nuclear weapons we must go ahead and make our own. That is a difficult problem, and we do not yet know the answer to it.
Here I want to say a word to the empty alliance Benches. It is all very well for the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) and the leader of the Liberal party to say that they want a minimum deterrent. They said that they did not think that Trident was necessary because it was too powerful. That is a sort of strategic inverted snobbery. If one is going to think in terms of decoupling Germany, let alone western Europe, from the United States surely one wants the best weapon one can get. One will not get anything cheaper than Trident, so one might as well go for the best.

Mr. Beith: If the right hon. Gentleman is thinking of decoupling, how is it effective decoupling to have a system which is wholly dependent on the continued support of the United States for its supply?

Mr. Amery: It is conceivable that in the process of decoupling the United States would go on supplying us with Trident, just as it is conceivable—the hon. Gentleman should not forget this—that it would supply the Germans with nuclear weapons under their own control as the price for letting its troops go. I hope that we are moving gradually into a rather different era.
The other implication we must consider—here I meet the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson)—is that we must strengthen the Western European Union and make it into an effective defence organisation and ensure that Germany plays a more important role in it. I see no conflict between NATO and the WEU. It so happens that I wrote the memorandum that persuaded Sir Anthony Eden to accept WEU. In it I said that NATO is a box to keep the Russians out of Europe and that we need to have a box to keep the Germans in Europe. That is really the effective programme. I put it crudely, but these things had better be said crudely if they are to be followed.
The Soviet Union is clearly keen on arms control and that provides an opportunity that we should press to resolve the regional problems that separate us. The arms race, which had come to a halt in what one might call the Nixon-Brezhnev period, started up again with the Soviet

invasion through surrogates in Angola. Mozambique and Ethiopia, the takeover of Aden, increasing influence in Vietnam and finally the invasion of Afghanistan.
In none of those places has the Soviet Union succeeded in consolidating Communist rule. The Soviets can supply arms, and they do, but they cannot supply development aid. Mozambique has become a caricature from that point of view. It is nominally a Marxist-Socialist country, but it is helped, as far as I can make out, by South Africa, Britain and the United States and help is going, in some cases, to both sides in their civil war.
To abandon any of those countries, particularly Afghanistan, involves a denial of the Brezhnev doctrine that one can never let down a Socialist state. However, some interesting exercises in semantics are going on. Dr. Kissinger claims that he was told at a seminar in Moscow the other day that Afghanistan is not really a Communist country or even really Socialist. Therefore, perhaps the Soviets are prepared to seek a way out.
It looks to me as if the West should stress the importance of the withdrawal of Soviet influence from the countries it has, to use Mr. Gladstone's phrase, "desecrated and despoiled" since 1974. Regional settlements must go hand in hand with arms control. I am not saying that they should be an integral part of arms negotiations, but I am saying that there should be linkage between them. If the Soviet attitudes are changing, and if we are up against a new era, this will be a test, and if it is proved, it is more than welcome.
However, let us be sure in our own minds that the Soviets have come to this point from the failure in their system at home, in competition with the West, and in consolidating their own empire. So that there is no need for us to pay for what they want to buy.

Mr. Tony Benn: One of the interesting characteristics of this debate is that, although many references have been made to changes in the Soviet Union, and they have been interpreted by some speakers, few have spoken about the changes occurring in Britain. I believe that a profound change has occurred in this country, and that of the two visits—one by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition to Washington and one by the Prime Minister to Moscow—the former was as significant as the latter. Both visits threw a light on the reality of the situation.
Strangely, as I entered the House, I opened a package containing the latest Gallup poll. I do not agree with polls much when it comes to election forecasts. However, before the Prime Minister's visit to Moscow, this poll asked the following question :
Who do you think has done the most to try to reach agreements about controlling nuclear weapons—President Reagan or Mr. Gorbachev?
The result was that 12 per cent. thought that President Reagan had done the most and 56 per cent. thought that Mr. Gorbachev had. As we are the British House of Commons, it might be worth spending a moment on these figures, which have been building up for some time, and examining the significance of the two visits at what is undoubtedly a turning point in terms of the way that the British people are assessing what is happening.
Since the end of the war, or shortly thereafter, there have been in British foreign and defence policy three basic assumptions, which I can easily rehearse. One was that the


Soviet Union would, if it had a chance, invade Western Europe, occupy West Germany, Italy, France, Norway and Sweden and come to Britain, except that we had the bomb, so it dared not do it. That assumption has appeared time and again. Indeed, somebody sent me the other day a letter that he had received from the Secretary of State for the Environment, which said :
Thank you for your letter … I am certain that the Russians would have been here already if it wasn't for the West's nuclear deterrent.
That assumption is absolutely fundamental to the policy of the present Government and of successive Governments since the war.
The second argument is that the United States stands for peace, democracy and human rights all over the world. The third assumption is that the very existence of nuclear weapons is our security. The American nuclear umbrella keeps the Russians out, and our own nuclear weapons provide us with an ultimate safeguard. I put it to the House that none of those assumptions is true, and that the public is beginning to come to that conclusion.
Let us examine what price we are paying for those assumptions before I go into them in any detail. First, we carry a massive arms burden in Britain—far higher as a proportion of national income than any other European member of NATO. When I compare that with the burden that the Japanese carry, it does not surprise me that the Japanese can sell videos, cars, televisions and telephone equipment all over the world. Only 1·5 per cent. of their much bigger national income goes on defence, whereas in Britain it is about 6 per cent. of a smaller national income.
The arms burden has also cost many lives in other parts of the world. I did not believe the figures that I am about to quote when I first saw them. Every week, 250,000 babies die in the world from preventable diseases, while we waste masses of our resources, on both sides of the world, on these huge budgets, of which star wars is the most criminally wasteful.
The second price that we pay is that we accept in Britain the United States bases that can be used without the consent of the British Parliament. I am an old parliamentary historian, and I believe that we should not have a standing army. Every year, when we pass the Army, Air Force and Naval Discipline Acts (Continuation) Order, I regard it as a real order, which allows us to prevent, as the 17th century Parliament resolved to prevent, a standing army from remaining on our territory. However, we have a standing army of 30,000 American troops in 125 installations and, in the event of conflict, whole areas of our country would be handed over to American control. Short of a nuclear war, President Reagan felt able to use our bases for the Libyan bombing raid, primarily to show that there was some international support for his action.
There is something else that the people should know. We do not have an independent nuclear weapon. One of the reasons why the Zircon film aroused security questions was that in it a former senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence made it clear that our so-called independent deterrent is not only American-built but requires the American satellite system to be used. We discovered that in 1964, when we came to power at the time that Polaris was about to come into service.
The third price that we pay for these three assumptions is the loss of the right to negotiate. I heard time and time again in the statements made about the Prime Minister's

visit to Moscow that she was not negotiating, but that is because she is not allowed to do so. The only negotiations that take place between Britain and Russia go through Gorbachev and Reagan. Recently a German Member of Parliament from the Green party asked me how many people realised that the bloc system in Europe makes countries that have never had any clash of interest, such as Poland and Portugal, into enemies. Poland and Portugal can talk to each other only through Reagan and Gorbachev. I have heard it argued that our possession of weapons gives us a seat at the high table, but it does not, because our allegedly independent nuclear weapons do not give us the right to sit in when Reagan negotiates on our behalf.
The final and heaviest price that we pay is that we have lived under fear for 40 years. That fear has corrupted a great deal of our thinking about the future. When I listen to the cold war propaganda, which goes out all the time, I wonder how big a factor that is in the development of our domestic politics.
That fear is spread by untrue statements. I have never forgotten one occasion in Cabinet, when a defence White Paper was brought to us, which showed a massive superiority of Soviet conventional forces. One of my colleagues in the Cabinet asked, "Where are the French?" They had not been included in the balance of forces as if, in the event of war, one was not quite sure whether France would be on the side of Russia because it is not a military member of NATO. The BBC and the media pump out false figures about military balance because they want to keep people in the thrall of fear.
If those three assumptions are questioned, one opens up a new range of options. I believe that the Russians have not attacked Western Europe because, having lost 20 million people in the last war, they have no desire to do so. I have been to the Soviet Union on ministerial visits on many occasions and I have been to Leningrad and seen a city where as many people died as died in the entire British and American armies put together. One hears Russians speak about the war in a way that nobody who lived in an island that was only bombed but never occupied could, and that makes one realise that the need for peace in the Soviet Union is great.
That need for peace is not because the Soviet economy is breaking down. Actually, our economy is not all that successful, with 4 million rotting on the dole when there are so many needs to be met. Do not let us be so very superior about the success of our system of market forces.
Let us look back. The British sent an army to Russia to destroy the revolution. That is never mentioned on the radio. The forgery of the Zinoviev letter, and the Arcos raid are never mentioned either. And those who wish to be reminded of a bit of history, I shall read what Harry Truman was reported as having said in the New York Times in 1941 :
If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and in that way let them kill as many as possible.
That was said by the architect of NATO when a United States senator. The Russians do not forget that, and they do have anxieties about security. Any policy towards them must be based on that recognition.
I do not need to say in the House—I argued about it with the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) at the time of Suez—that when I was born we were an empire. I checked it out the other day. One fifth


of the land space and population of the world was governed from this Chamber on the day that I was born. If we cannot recognise a new empire when it looms out of the mist, we must have forgotten our history. The Americans are an empire, and empires pursue policies—as our empire did—in support of its own economic interests.
The idea that the United States is in favour of human rights in Chile is an outrage. It toppled an elected Government and put Pinochet there to protect its economic investment. We did the same. When we were an empire, I remember, as a little boy, being taken to meet Mr. Gandhi when he came to London in 1931 for the round table conference. No Conservative Members talked about human rights in India then, because we were running India. When Mr. Gandhi was asked what he thought of civilisation in Britain, he replied "I think that it would be a very good idea." That was an accurate reflection of the way in which the Indians saw us.
The Americans went into Grenada; they support Botha; they back Turkey. They have no regard for human rights if they conflict with their interests. We were the same. The Russians, as a very powerful country, invaded and intervened in Hungary. As a Member of Parliament, I raised that in a letter toPravda. I went with others, leading the Labour delegation at the time of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. It cannot be said that Britain's record on human rights, either present or historical, entitles us to say that "We will not talk to you until you recognise it."

Mr. Winnick: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. His reputation on human rights is well known in all parts of the world. Is he aware that on 28 November 1973, when the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) was a junior Foreign Office Minister, he condoned what was happening in Chile after the coup, and said that Britain had no right to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries? Where can it be said that Tory Members are concerned about human rights outside the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe?

Mr. Benn: I think that every major country must be very careful. When I was interviewed by the Moscow newspaper that was quoted against me, I said in respect of human rights:
Frankly, I don't think any government in the world can be credited with outstanding achievements in this sphere.
That led to the Prime Minister beginning to draft a deportation order for me, as far as I could make out, but I made a true point. Those who believe in human rights do not have a double standard. They favour them wherever people in the so-called free world are threatened.
Other options are open. One that has been mentioned is the possibility of a Franco-German force de frappe. I have long been of the opinion that the Germans have the capacity to build nuclear weapons because of their high degree of skill. Ten years ago, as Energy Secretary, I stopped in Frankfurt on my way to Saudi Arabia and had lunch with the chairman of Nu-Kem, the German BNFL. He said that only 50 people would have to know if nuclear facilities were diverted from peace to war. With their arrangements with the Brazilians and others, I think that it is highly unlikely that the West Germans have no capacity to have the bomb anyway.
The question is, what should our policy be? I share the view of my right hon. Friends—expressed to a President who was exceedingly discourteous to them—that the policy they put forward is the right one. But, at the same time, we should look a little beyond that. I want to look as far ahead as I can. We still live under the legacy of Hitler, who divided Europe and left us with a divided Europe. Are we really to say that, into the 21st century, we are content to be lined up in blocs?
I went back to the treaty of friendship that we signed with the Russians in 1942. It was signed by Mr. Anthony Eden, who was later Prime Minister, and, on the other side, by Molotov. It dealt with wartime collaboration in the war against Hitler, and also with the post-war period. The words that I am going to read were signed by Eden and remained in force after we joined NATO:
The High Contracting Parties: Desiring to contribute to the maintenance of Peace … to give expression to the intention to collaborate … in adopting proposals for common action to preserve Peace, and resist aggression, having regard to the interests of the security of each of them, agree to work together in close and friendly collaboration, for the organization of security and economic prosperity in Europe … will act in accordance with the two principles of not seeking territorial aggrandisement for themselves and of non-interference in the intended affairs of other States"——

Mr. Nicholas Soames: That rules out Afghanistan.

Mr. Benn: At least most of the people responsible for the Soviet intervention in Hungary are dead, whereas one of the arch-aggressors of the Suez invasion is still sitting on the Woolsack. Let us not lecture people about that.
The treaty continues:
to render one another all possible economic assistance … undertakes not to conclude any alliance and not to take part in any coalition directed against the other High Contracting Party.
We should now build on the Moscow visit. I am not one of those who mock it, although it may not have had the intended effect. We should build on the visit by trying to renew the treaty of friendship signed by Eden, or by Winston Churchill, with the Soviet Union during the war. In place of the ghastly bloc system, in which I have no confidence, we should start to build bilaterals in Europe. Mr. Papandreou has gone to Bulgaria—one party from NATO, the other from the Warsaw pact—and signed an agreement with Zhivkov. The West Germans and the East Germans are now working together. I should like us to move out of the bloc system towards a European security that recognises the specific and distinct interests of every European country. Such a treaty could be signed on a much more multilateral basis by an assertion of bilateral agreement. If we did that, we could reallocate resources to meet the real threat to the survival of humanity—the threat posed by starvation in the Third world—and reduce arms expenditure.
I do not agree, and nor did the Labour party conference, with the view that every penny to be saved from nuclear weapons should be spent on conventional weapons. The motion for transferring resources was carried at the conference by 5 million votes to one. The policy that was put forward at conference is the correct one.

Mr. Amery: The right hon. Gentleman read to us the terms of the Anglo-Soviet agreement, and there would be much to be said for it if it was honoured and respected. He


took as one example the Soviet intervention in Hungary, and brushed it aside by talking about what we did at Suez. However, he said nothing about the defenestration of Mr. Masaryk in Prague. The right hon. Gentleman said nothing about the events in Poland, or about the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. The Russians cannot be said to have respected the terms of any agreement. That is why the bloc system has come into being.

Mr. Benn: I quoted the report of my interview in the Moscow paper, in which I said that no great power has a very good human rights record. I did not know whether the question would be raised, but I looked up the letter that five or six of us wrote toPravda at the time of the invasion of Hungary. We said :
We protest against Soviet intervention in Hungary, because we think it wrong for any great power to impose its will on a small country for strategic or any other reasons. For this very reason we condemned the Anglo-French attack on Egypt.
The Prime Minister has done so much to undermine human rights and civil liberties in Britain. She said that the Russians have agreed to stop jamming the BBC, but the Government have been jamming the BBC by sending in the security services. When the Russians stopped jamming the BBC the Prime Minister started jamming it. Human rights cannot be used as an argument for deferring progress on disarmament.
The assumptions upon which Britain's post-war foreign and defence policies have rested are no longer true: that the Russians have ever wanted to invade, that the Americans are the defenders of freedom and that nuclear weapons—particularly after Chernobyl—provided an element of stability in the world. The time is coming—it may come after the next general election, but I am also looking towards the 21st century—when we shall have to replace the bloc system and the arms race, including the nuclear arms race, with a British policy that is designed to bridge the gap between East and West and to narrow the gap between the north and the south that is caused by poverty. Apart from the injustice that it creates, that, too, in the end could be the ultimate cause of a war that would destroy humanity.

Mr. Dennis Walters: I hope that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) will forgive me if I do not follow him down all the paths that he has travelled, some of which were very esoteric. However, I do not disagree with him that the last war left a scar on the Soviet Union that has not yet healed.
Several of my hon. Friends have rightly paid tribute to the remarkable and highly successful visit to the Soviet Union by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary. They were not joined by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). I have considerable respect and, indeed, affection for him, although I do not approve of his present posture on defence. In his knockabouts he can be excellent and extremely funny, but today he was not up to his usual standard.
It is not unreasonable to hope that, as a result of the visit and the long and wide ranging talks, progress will follow on a number of important issues. My right hon. and learned Friend referred to the talks held in Moscow about the middle east. Progress towards peace in the middle east would be as important an achievement as any. It is an area

of continuing and acute tension and a major international conflict could still be triggered off there. Advance to a settlement has been lamentably slow, and one significant cause for the paralysis has been the determination of the United States Administration to exclude the Soviet Union from the peace process. This has been an attitude lacking in statesmanship and vision, because the Soviet Union could make a valuable contribution to progress and, just as easily, could impede the peace process. Of course, that is not the only or the most important aspect of American foreign policy in the middle east that has continued to demoralise not only those of us who are anxious to see progress towards peace but also those of us who wish to see Western influence in the area preserved and strengthened.
The main cause of the failure of American policy has been its incapacity to provide any semblance of an evenhanded approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its bind support for Israel, irrespective of the circumstances, has lost it both credibility and influence. There are, however, some new factors and some recent developments that are perhaps worth looking at. It is, for instance, conceivable that Irangate and the Pollard affair may have just begun to shake the stranglehold that the Zionist lobby in Washington has held for so long. In Irangate, for instance, it became increasingly clear, as the story emerged, that Israel played a major and invidious role in it.
What is particularly striking about this—as the late David Watt, who will be sadly missed, wrote in one of his last articles inThe Times—was the ease with which the Israelis were able to play on the United States Administration's weaknesses for their own ends. Equally remarkable, he pointed out, was the kid-gloved caution' with which most of the American media treated this aspect of the affair. He concluded that anybody who has worked in Washington or New York knows the reasons: the Israeli lobby has established an unrivalled position of power over the years. The question we should now be asking ourselves is whether this lobby has been undermined. Just conceivably it has been, and that would be a hopeful development. It is at least worth trying to find out.
I have often argued in the past few years that the only way in which progress could start to be made towards a middle east settlement would be through an international conference and that the participation of the Soviet Union in such a conference was essential. That it will now come about seems far more likely. A real opportunity has opened up, whereby my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, before or after the general election, might be able to persuade President Reagan to support such an endeavour. But an international conference would make progress only if serious preparatory work were carried out in advance. Here again, Britain and the EEC have a significant role to play.
The most recent EEC communique on the middle east was realistic and positive, addressing itself—as it did—to the fundamental issues that needed to be resolved. It is encouraging that Mr. Tindemans is shortly to embark on a fact-finding tour of the area. He should, however, add Syria to his itinerary if he wants to understand and influence the Arab side.
If it proved possible to establish a shared Arab negotiating position, an important step towards a successful conference would have been taken. The essential


people in formulating such an accord, who would also be key participants, would be King Hussein, President Assad and of course the Palestinians.
Even more important and much more difficult is to persuade Israel to make the territorial concessions necessary for a successful peace settlement. Only the United States has the leverage which could make Israel move. The question is, will it exercise such leverage? There is no doubt that territory in exchange for peace remains the only realistic basis for successful negotiations. After 20 years, the implementation of resolution 242 still is at the heart of the solution. An international consensus on this point exists and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister might be able to convince President Reagan and his advisers that one state should not be allowed to veto a settlement. Here lies the key to peace in the middle east.
Shortage of time prevents me from touching on the Iran-Iraq war except to say that, although separate, it is part of the same malady which pervades the whole area. The resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict would have a decisive influence on the war and greatly weaken the threat of expanding and aggressive Islamic fundamentalism.
The outlook for a settlement since 1982, the year of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, has been exceedingly bleak. There are now some windows which show signs that they may conceivably be prised open. The EEC and Britain in particular are in a unique position to assist in doing so.
Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the tragic ending of the British mandate in Palestine, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Esher (Sir C. Mather) referred. It would be wholly right and appropriate if by then British and European diplomatic action had succeeded in establishing a process of negotiation which was making progress. Thereby we could redeem at least part of our failure in Palestine and go some way towards fulfilling our mandatory obligations to the Palestinian people.

Mr. James Lamond: The response of the Prime Minister to her recent visit to the Soviet Union was perhaps the most interesting aspect of it. Of course, she planned the visit and the programme with an eye to impressing the British electorate and she returned flushed with her success, as she saw it, in that respect, because she had enormous television coverage and the impression she wished to convey—that of a world statesman—perhaps came over to the public. But I think that that could be quite short-lived.
What interests me more is the feeling the right hon. Lady gained from her visit. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) mentioned the Inter-Parliamentary Union trip in May and June last year under the leadership of the deputy Prime Minister which followed the same pattern almost as the Prime Minister's visit. That was not my first visit to the Soviet Union either. My own experience and feelings stem from visits beginning as long ago as 1960 when I was a trade unionist.
No one can visit the Soviet Union without being impressed by the desire of the ordinary people for peace and friendship with the world and in particular with the West. There is no anti-American or anti-British feeling there. Their concern for peace stems from the suffering which they went through in what they refer to as the great

patriotic war and the struggle that they have had to rebuild their country since 1945. They do not want to go through all that again. They do not want to launch any war against the West. They are very anxious to build bridges. I hope that the Prime Minister at least gained that impression from her visit to the Soviet Union.
The Prime Minister did not quite follow the complete pattern of the IPU visit because we went to Leningrad. A visit to Leningrad is a valuable experience in the education of anyone from the West because we do not realise the struggle that the people of that city went through in the 900-day siege during the last war: the starvation in the city, the pitifully small rations, the deaths. No one who has visited the mass graves, as the IPU delegation did, could fail to be impressed by the fact that more than 600,000 people were buried in that cemetery in huge mass graves. That is just about half the number who lost their lives in Leningrad.
I was there with a young woman of perhaps 30 years of age who was visiting the memorial. A film was shown of what happened during the siege and that girl was in tears. As far as I know, she was not Left wing in her political views. I have no reason to think that she was anything other than what an Oxford graduate might be expected to be—perhaps at least moderate in her views. She said that what struck her most of all was that, although she had been given perhaps as good an education as it is possible to get in this country, she knew nothing of the sufferings, the struggle and the tremendous resistance of the people not only in Leningrad but in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of towns and cities similarly placed throughout the Soviet Union.
One has to understand that background when one goes to the Soviet Union and tries to talk to its leader. This desire for peace did not begin with the arrival of General Secretary Gorbachev at the top of the political tree in the Societ Union. It has been there certainly as long as I have been visiting that country, and it is very deep-rooted and sincere.
Mr. Gorbachev has put proposals on the table in a very imaginative way in an attempt to achieve some movement in the West towards agreement. There was the moratorium on nuclear tests, for instance, which went on for over 18 months, without the slightest sign of response from the United States or Britain, and was broken only when the United States began its new series of tests. Then there were the proposals Mr. Gorbachev made in January of last year and those he made at Reykjavik when he met President Reagan. None of them was responded to as it should have been.
Now we have our Prime Minister going to the Soviet Union, and that is where her dilemma arose. She was perhaps satisfied that she had had a lot of television coverage and that the impression was given that something had been achieved. But the poverty of the achievements was revealed today when we heard the Foreign Secretary again try to outline what they were. There was the initialling of agreements on trade. Of course we welcome that, but there is much room for improvement in our trading position with the Soviet Union. We need only to discuss it with the British Soviet Chamber of Commerce to understand that our share of the market has been dwindling over the years and that our place has been taken by other western European countries.
There is a suggestion that there will be new embassies. That is welcome, of course. I hope that when the new


embassy for the Soviet Union is built we do not have the absurd hullabaloo that there was in Kensington last time. These are small matters internationally. The fact that they have to be emphasised as achievements of the visit drew attention to what had not been achieved.
What has happened once again is that the Prime Minister has come back determined to emphasise that she, if no one else, believes that nuclear weapons are a good thing. When she said that on Soviet television, I am sure that the people could not believe their ears. That is the same as saying that the future of humanity does not matter. The Prime Minister has made that clear even on her return from the Soviet Union. The Prime Minister put all sorts of obstacles in the way of achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000.
She mentioned human rights. Of course we are all concerned about human rights. I suppose that every hon. Member has received letters about the treatment not just of Jews in the Soviet Union but of others. If other hon. Members are like me, they have taken up the matters in the appropriate place and tried to help. But to suggest that it is impossible to reach agreement on nuclear weapons and disarmament with a country which has people whom we think of as political prisoners is nonsense.
The Government, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary achieved an excellent agreement with the Chinese People's Republic about the future of Hong Kong and the 4·5 million who live there, irrespective of the fact that they were dealing in the Chinese People's Republic with a Government who certainly have political prisoners and certainly have abused human rights. Yet, despite our disagreement with them, agreement was possible on Hong Kong. If we are not to negotiate with any country that has political prisoners, we will cut down sharply on the number of countries with which we can negotiate.
The Government say that the Russians must come out of Afghanistan before it is possible to believe that they will keep their word. It has suddenly been discovered that the Russians would like to come out of Afghanistan. I invite hon. Members to read the debate which took place at the time of the Soviet Union intervention in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union never wanted to go there in the first place. It was not an invasion. The Russians had lived in peace and harmony with Afghanistan for more than 50 years. It was the first country with which they have signed a pact of friendship.
Those who think that Afghanistan was a heaven on earth before 1978 have never been there, as I have. I was there before the Russian intervention when the country was under the dictatorship of Daud. It was one of the most backward countries in the world with its illiteracy, its treatment of women and its record on human rights. Hon. Members should examine the record of the Daud Administration. Let us set that aside. There are hon. Members who know very well that the Soviet Union was asked on at least three occasions to intervene in Afghanistan. When I was speaking in the debate at that time, I was told by some hon. Members that the Russians had been asked many more times to intervene before they were finally persuaded to help the Afghanistan Government.
The Russians want to get out as soon as foreign intervention in Afghanistan ceases. By that I mean, of course, the assistance given by the dollars that are sent to

the Afghan rebels through Pakistan. All that is open now, although there was an attempt in 1979 to suggest that there was no such intervention.
In any case, what has all that to do with us reaching agreement with the Russians? It has been mentioned in the debate that there was a lull in the arms race at the time of Nixon. The Soviet Union was prepared to deal with President Nixon despite the fact that the Americans had troops in Vietnam to whom the Soviet Union had as much objection as we have to the Russian troops in Afghanistan, but they did not let that stand in the way of negotiations with Nixon. They realised that world disarmament and the survival of the human race stand above such differences.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) has already said a great deal of what I intended to say. I agree wholeheartedly with the point he made about the need to use any money we can save from the arms race for constructive purposes, particularly in the Third world. We speak so smugly about 40 years of peace in Europe having been achieved by this tremendous expenditure on nuclear weapons, but that peace has not been achieved without deaths being caused in the Third world. The Russians are just as much at fault as we are. Of world expenditure on arms, 80 per cent. was and is made by the nations who signed the Helsinki final act in 1975. There has been no improvement in 12 years. Those who suffer in the arms race are the millions who go to bed hungry, who have no proper health provision and who have no proper water supply, and the children who die in thousands every day because of the lack of proper facilities, all of which could be provided easily out of the unnecessary expenditure on arms by the Americans, the Soviet Union and ourselves.
Government supporters may think that that is an amusing and idealistic view; they may say that my feet are not on the ground because there will always be an arms race in the real world. We must speak out against it. We must make it clear that we do not accept the inevitability of the arms race and that we can help the Third world. Our foreign policy should be based firmly on that. The big arms manufacturers in the United Slates and here must have an enemy so as to frighten the people of this country and the United States into providing the money for the profits that they make from the arms race.
If the Soviet Union disappeared as an enemy and there was subsequent pressure on the United States, Britain and other countries to reduce the amount spent on defence, a fresh enemy would have to be found. In the next century perhaps that enemy will be pinpointed as the Third world. The poor and the have-nots who make up 80 per cent. of the world will ask why the other 20 per cent. should consume 80 per cent. of the world's provisions. They will then be shown to be the enemy and we will have to arm to the teeth to guard against them. If that is the future, it is very bleak. This is a turning point and an opportunity to cut arms expenditure and use it for far better purposes.

Sir Peter Blaker: The hon. Member for Oldham, Central and Royton (Mr. Lamond) referred to the desire for peace of the ordinary people of the Soviet Union. I hope that they will soon be able to express their views on peace because until now they have not had that opportunity. In contrast to what I understood to be the impression of the hon. Member of the consequences of the Prime Minister's interview with the three Soviet


journalists, I believe that that remarkable interview helped to get across to the Soviet people and their leaders our desire in the West for peace. The Soviets have not had the opportunity yet to hear that point of view. That is a breakthrough. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and other western leaders will be able to express their views on Soviet television again.
It has been observed that we may be at a favourable turning point in East-West relations. That may well be so. There are indications that the Soviet Union and the West now simultaneously have a desire to negotiate on the same subjects. There is evidence that Mr. Gorbachev sincerely wants to achieve radical changes in the economy and political scene in the Soviet Union and also to make advances—modest though they are so far—in human rights.
I assume for the purpose of my argument that the speech that was made by Mr. Gorbachev last spring at the 27th Soviet Communist Congress may indicate that he is beginning to come to the conclusion that the positive, forward-thrusting attitude of the Soviet Communist party until now towards the rest of the world, its assumption that the destiny of Soviet Communism is to supplant eventually the systems in the free countries and the dogma that has existed ever since the Russian revolution of 1917, can be the cause of world friction. Let us hope that Mr. Gorbachev may be realising that circumstances in the world are changing in such a way that it is time that that dogma should be abandoned. If that were to happen, it would be a breakthrough of enormous significance.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym) in his interesting speech said that our task is to survive in unity and freedom until the Soviet rulers come to this conclusion. Assuming that there are these favourable developments in the Soviet Union and in the international scene, we should ask what factors have led to these better East-West relations. I refer to three factors. The first has been the firmness and unity of the West. The Soviet strategy has been and is now to divide the West.
I have taken part in negotiations for some years with the Soviet Union on arms limitation. Its strategy in those negotiations and in other negotiations that I have observed has been to see whether it can divide the Western countries from one another. Only when they fail in that effort do they get down to serious negotiation. The greatest danger to the West and to Western Europe is not that of war, as long as we are reasonably sensible in maintaining our defences and our resolution. The greatest danger is political division between Western countries. If that occurred, the Soviet Union would end up by dominating Western Europe as it has for so many years dominated Eastern Europe.
The unity of the West in relation to the introduction of cruise and Pershing missiles has been very important. If we had succumbed to the threats of the Soviet Union about the dire consequences of persisting in our policies of bringing in those missiles to match the existing SS20s on the Soviet sites, there would have been a profound loss of confidence and division between the NATO countries, and there would have been no negotiations on independent nuclear forces in Europe. The Soviet Union would not have needed to negotiate. It could have kept its SS20s and other missiles without the need for any negotiation at all.
The second factor for this more favourable situation is the economic failure of the Soviet Union. Nowhere in the world is there a Socialist economic system that works. The Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, France in the first years of the Mitterrand Administration, Tanzania and others—all those countries are realising that Socialism is a flop and they have to seek better systems based on human incentives. Mr. Gorbachev sees the need to invigorate the Soviet system by moving in that direction. I hope that he also sees a need for a reduction in the massive Soviet spending on arms of between 13 and 15 per cent. of Soviet GDP.

Mr. Winnick: The right hon. Member has spoken of Socialist systems. I agree that an overcentralised and largely bureaucratic economic system is not likely to work, but does the right hon. Member not accept that under the capitalist system, leaving aside what happened before the second world war, there remains in the advanced capitalist countries—certainly in Britain and the United States—great poverty, deprivation and misery, and also in many Third world countries that are far from Marxist?

Sir Peter Blaker: There is an analogy with what Sir Winston Churchill said—that the system of democracy has many disadvantages but there is no system that is not even worse. Capitalism may have many problems and disadvantages but there is no better system; every other system is worse.
The third factor that has helped to created better East-West relations is the role of Her Majesty's Government—especially relevant during a time when the United States Government has had more than its share of problems in its international policy. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary on his role in giving greater emphasis since 1983 to dialogue with the Soviet Union. The former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East, said that he had planned to visit the countries of Eastern Europe. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary has visited every country in Eastern Europe. He has had 12 meetings with successive Soviet Foreign Ministers and has not spared himself in the cause of promoting dialogue with the Soviet Union.
The Prime Minister's trip to Moscow must be seen as the culmination of a process that has been continuing ever since the beginning of this Parliament. One of the main features of the Prime Minister's visit to Moscow will prove to be the particular relationship—I use the word "particular" rather than "special" because I might cause confusion if I applied that word to this relationship—that has developed between her and Mr. Gorbachev. They are able to discuss without rancour matters on which they differ profoundly. That is a unique relationship to develop between a Western leader and a leader of the Soviet Union. I can think of no other relationship of that sort. The relationship potentially has very great importance for East-West relations and for peace over the years ahead.
One component of that remarkable relationship is the recognition by Mr. Gorbachev of the Prime Minister's ability—which has been demonstrated on a number of occasions—to persuade President Reagan to adopt practical, sensible and workable policies on matters of importance in the context of East-West relations. I am particularly thinking of the two Camp David meetings


that the Prime Minister had with President Reagan, one of which was about SDI in December 1984 and the other after the Reykjavik summit in 1986.
What a contrast we have seen between the successful policies of Her Majesty's Government in the context of East-West relations, defence and disarmament and the chaos on the Opposition Benches. The Leader of the Opposition endorses NATO, but rejects its policies. He accepts the protection of the United States, but only if the United States protects us in the way that he wants. So far as I can make sense of his policies, they involve depriving our forces in Germany of the protection of nuclear weapons while neighbouring allied troops have those nuclear weapons. In one of his most recent statements, the Leader of the Opposition said that a Labour Government would not insist on American nuclear forces being withdrawn from this country so long as negotiations between East and West were continuing. That reveals the fundamental weakness of the Labour party's position. I do not believe that this point has been made yet—if it has been made, it has not been made firmly enough and should be repeated regularly. If we had a Labour Government with basic policies of ejecting American nuclear forces from this country and throwing away our own nuclear defences, the Soviet Union—if it was then engaged in negotiations—would only have to terminate negotiations with the United States to achieve its objective. It would not need to negotiate to get what it wanted. It could get that through no effort on its part. There would be no incentive for the Soviet Union to continue negotiations. The reality of the Labour party position is that it wants to eject all nuclear weapons from this country as fast as possible.
The pretence in the Labour party position that a Labour Government would so increase our conventional forces that nuclear deterrents would become irrelevant is wholly fraudulent. That simply cannot be achieved within our budget even if—contrary to the wishes of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) as expressed this afternoon—the Labour Government saved the money to be spent on Trident and put it to building up our conventional forces. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) knows that the Labour policy is nonsense. When addressing audiences in the United States he tries to pretend that Labour's policies are different from what they really are, but that only makes the confusion worse.
I am sorry that no representative of the Liberal party or the Social Democratic party is present in the Chamber. This debate has been marked by a total absence of any SDP Member apart from a rapid visit by the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins) who came in for about five minutes son-le two and a half hours after the beginning of the debate, but was whisked away by the leader of the Liberal party to some destination, we know not where. One member of the Liberal party was present. I reflected while the spokesman on foreign affairs, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), was speaking on defence and disarmament negotiations that it was a pity that he did not have some of his Liberal colleagues with him in the Chamber so that we could hear about their policies and learn how they differed from the policies of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed. That would have been an interesting debate. It would have been even more interesting if the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) had been present to add his version which, of course, is wholly different from that

of any member of the Liberal party. I can sum up the position of the Liberal and Social Democrat parties—so far as the Liberals have a coherent position at all—by saying that the Liberal party is against nuclear deterrence and the SDP is in favour of it. Therefore, they compromise on the basis of two words: "don't know". It is certain that after the election, whatever the result may be, the first thing that will happen will be civil war between the two different parties in the alliance.
If the Labour party or the alliance had been in power for the past seven or eight years, would we now be in this favourable international position in the context of East-West relations? I believe that the confusion and disarray that would very likely have existed in that period would have meant that the Soviet Union would have felt it unnecessary to make any concessions. It would not have felt impelled towards the fruitful developments we have seen in the Soviet Union in recent times.
Would Mr. Gorbachev have seen the necessity to reform Soviet society if NATO had been in disarray? Would he not have waited to see what happened on the Western side? The answer it perfectly clear. NATO's firmness and unity have helped to bring the Soviet Union to negotiations as Conservative Members forecast in the years 1979 to 1983. Mr. Gorbachev has given the conclusive answer to the women of Greenham common.

Mrs. Renée Short: I was delighted to hear the Foreign Secretary say that his recent visit with the Prime Minister to the USSR was
certainly an important opportunity to bring our two countries and our peoples together".
I was also delighted to learn that the Prime Minister said that she was
struck by the spontaneous warmth and friendliness of my reception by the people of the Soviet Union".—[Official Report, 2 April 1987; Vol. 113, c. 1225.]
That is a good start to warmer relations and a better understanding of the Soviet Union and her people.
Had the Prime Minister had an open mind about the Soviet Union, she need not have been so struck, for she would have known that already. My visits to the Soviet Union extend over many years from the late 1950s arid early 1960s and they have shown me how warm-hearted the Soviet people are. Last June, during the visit of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation of which I had the privilege to be a member—a delegation led by Lord Whitelaw—we saw again the spontaneous friendship and goodwill towards us.
The Soviet people, of course, have poignant memories of the sacrifices that they made in defending their country against facism and they are ever grateful to us for the help that we were able to give. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, Central and Royton (Mr. Lamond) referred to the destruction and appalling loss of life suffered by the Soviet people followed by many long years of sacrifice in order to build up their country again. We should be ever mindful of their sacrifice. They are grateful for the help that we were able to give in defeating Hitler's evil regime. We should always remember the comradeship that bound us together over those years during the war and in the years afterwards.
When she came back from Moscow, the Prime Minister stressed the Helsinki agreement and of course we support that agreement. In June, when we talked to him about


those matters, Mr. Gorbachev gave us the same reply that he gave to the Prime Minister. Since then a number of so-called dissidents have been released and reunited with their families and some Soviet husbands have been reunited with their British wives. We hope that this process will continue and I have every confidence that it will.
Before I went to Moscow many cases were raised with me by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. These cases were raised with Mr. Gorbachev and we drew attention to the plight of Soviet psychiatrists and others being held against their will, clearly for no other reason than that they held unconventional political views. As a result of our representations a number of Jews were released and given exit permits. This process must continue. All these changes will make for better relations with the Soviet Union, and I am confident that with Mr. Gorbachev in power this lessening of tension and the release of people from prison will continue.
I am rather disturbed that the Prime Minister made no reference to British-Soviet co-operation in the general disciplines of science and technology. This is a very important way of building bonds and links between the two countries, and Soviet scientists are very keen to see those links developed. We were told this when we met Soviet scientists at various meetings. They are anxious to co-operate and work with our scientists, but that requires resources to enable Soviet scientists to come and work here. This ought to be part of our programme. There is no doubt that collaboration and contacts in these fields have been reduced since 1979, largely as a result of the negative attitude of the British Government.
I know a good deal about the construction industry. It is trying to produce a new system of Euro codes through co-operation with member states of the European Community. The Soviet Union is involved in this development of Euro codes and has taken part in the Commit& Europôen du Beton. The new Euro codes are based on the scientific work of international and professional organisations of which the Soviet Union and most other Socialist countries in Europe are members, together with our representatives and those of other Common Market countries.
What is the Prime Minister and the Government doing to reactivate scientific contacts with the Soviet Union? I hope that the Government will regard these as important ways of developing more bonds between our practical scientists and our technologists in ways that will benefit both our peoples. Until recently, student exchanges between us and the USSR were hampered by inadequate financial support from the Government. The sum of £1,906 per annum per student was allowed. That was about £400 less than the amount assessed by university departments as being necessary to maintain students here and allow them to take part in journeys in Britain to visit cultural establishments, theatres and so on. However, I am glad to hear that this amount is to be increased to £2,246 from next September. I hope that this will enable many more students from the Soviet Union to spend some time here.
Contacts between young people are among the best ways of pursuing a fruitful and friendly policy towards other countries. The British Council has played an important part in enabling young people to go to the Soviet Union to study, but the council's resources have

been reduced by the Government. I hope that we can persuade the Government to look again at the resources made available to the British Council.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister about an increase in Government financial help towards the £500,000 that is the cost of exchange between the National theatre and the Mayakovsky theatre in Moscow. This is chickenfeed, a tiny amount of money. The Government have offered the miserable sum of £12,500. In view of the Chancellor's recent £6 billion bribe to the electorate, surely the Government can do better than that miserable amount. I hope that the matter will be looked at again so that an additional amount can be made available to allow this exchange to take place. It will be an exciting, stimulating and fruitful exchange between two nationally famous and internationally regarded theatres.
Cultural agreements are very important, especially for improving our relations and furthering a positive foreign policy. However, such agreements are pointless unless they are backed with resources that will make them effective. Cultural contacts with the Soviet Union have largely been conducted by voluntary organisations such as the British-Soviet Friendship Society, of which I am vice-president, and the Society for Cultural Relations. To be effective both rely on the goodwill of their members. The Foreign Office was and is indifferent to such efforts.
Another organisation in which many of us are interested is the Great Britain-USSR trade delegation. Representatives of our best industries are keen to develop trade, and that is valuable for both sides. I hope that the Government will provide more resources to enable that organisation to be more effective. I take issue with the statement made by the Prime Minister that it had taken her quite a time
to turn Britain round from Socialism to a country with a high standard of living, …strong defence … Therefore, it will take much longer to turn round the Soviet system."—[Official Report, 2 April 1987; Vol. 113, c. 1237.]
She has got a hope coming, because she will not turn round the Soviet system and I doubt whether anybody else will. I do not think that Mr. Gorbachev is unaware of the prominence of this country. Have we a high standard of living, a strong defence? I think that he knows better than that, just as we do. I doubt whether he would be any more pleased than we are at her interpretation of Britain after years of her Government. There are nearly 4 million people unemployed. There are threats to reduce benefit to young people and others, we have a depleted Navy and merchant marine, and a huge gap between the well-off and the poor in respect of health, housing and jobs.
The Prime Minister's talk of turning round the Soviet system is not exactly a good foundation on which to build better relations and a more constructive foreign policy towards the Soviet Union. One hopes that she will learn sense before too long. For the peace of the world a constructive foreign policy that recognises the positive aspects of the new leadership in the Soviet Union is essential and could bring enormous benefit to all of us. That is what we all must build on.

Mr. Peter Temple-Morris: It is always a pleasure to follow a speech by the hon. Lady the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short). She and I, together with my noble Friend Lord Whitelaw, went on


the IPU delegation to the Soviet Union. We all came back with an intimate, if not privileged, impression of the amount of change that was going on there and the degree of opportunity for progress in disarmament that now exists between East and West. In the main, the hon. Lady made a constructive contribution to this debate. We are well aware of the good work that she does for Anglo-Soviet relations which she has been doing for many years.
I do not wish to take up much time, because many of my hon. Friends and Opposition Members wish to contribute to the debate. I shall headline points and not embellish them to too great an extent. As I have said, the present situation is extremely promising and there is virtually a unique opportunity for progress. However, to my mind, the present situation is more than a little dangerous, not in terms of simple danger but because of the real possibility that between us all we could fail to take one of the greatest historical opportunities to make progress in disarmament that has existed in my lifetime.
That great opportunity has been there for some years. It has not just sprung up but has even been reflected in my speeches in the House in successive foreign affairs debates since 1984. It precedes Mr. Gorbachev and, apart from defence policy, the reason for it is simple and has been developing within the Soviet Union. Basically, it is that the economy of the Soviet Union is not working and the cost of the arms race is increasing, not only in terms of nuclear potential but because of the enormously increasing cost of conventional armaments. Mr. Gorbachev is introducing many dramatic suggestions. It was his mentor, Mr. Andropov, who, for a brief period, represented the beginning of this current opportunity which exists in East-West relations.
As to the West, while I agree with many of the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) made about the need for the unity of the West, the question which must be posed is whether the strain of maintaining that unity will cause us to lose out on the existing opportunity. The West has not got its act together in that regard to the extent that I should like. I shall draw attention to certain specifics of which the strategic defence initiative is paramount. That is utterly wrong because it threatens the progress of negotiations. It is a new chapter in the arms race, as I have said before in some detail. There are grave European misgivings about it which go far beyond the officially spoken word of many western European and NATO countries.
As to the ABM treaty, the broad interpretation to many of us appears to be illegal and certainly against its spirit. The reason for my saying that is that progress on strategic arms, which must be at the pinnacle of disarmament, is in doubt while we have the strategic defence initiative in its present form, because the Soviet Union will rely, in default of technological advantage in this sector, on a policy of saturation. Therefore, the programme will be put out of sequence. With a strategic stalemate we start to look desperately for progress in any area.
I would go along with any suggestion that represented progress, but I should like to make it clear to the House—here I may appear to be speaking against the INF agreement—that I am a package man. The negotiations should be conducted as a package—these remarks are addressed to Capitol Hill and the White House as much as they are to hon. Members. We should be negotiating strategic arms and the strategic defence initiative at the

pinnacle. We should also be negotiating on short-range missiles, chemical warfare and other aspects which have been mentioned by hon. Members.
That brings me to the Soviet INF offer. Here I would accept and advocate progress. I do not want hon. Members to get wrong what I am about to say. I would take the risk and have the progress, but we must remind ourselves—this point has not been made as much as it should be—that taken alone the INF offer represents, from the Soviet point of view, a brilliantly timed offer. It hits at the soft underbelly of the West's desperate desire for progress, which is often frustrated, in European eyes, by its differences with Washington. Europe is looking for progress and the United States, because of Irangate, is desperately looking for progress, not least for presidential credibility. Taken separately, it must be to the Soviet advantage.
The INF proposal detaches the United States from Europe. We all remember the battles to install these weapons in the first place. A major Soviet fear is removed of the presence with a nuclear capability of the United States on non-American soil. An American missile five minutes from Moscow was always the major fear of the Soviet Union in this regard. It was in the context of encirclement, and anybody who has been there will know what I am talking about. An intermediate range missile operated by the United States is what the Soviet Union would term as a free shot within Europe. The Soviet Union regard that as an unfair advantage.
The INF offer leaves the Soviets with an advantage as to short range superiority, unless negotiations rapidly follow. In view of the general situation, and in spite of that, I would still like to make every possible progress on the INF offer. But once one gets out of the proper sequence of disarmament, and because it is not within our power in this House to control that sequence, we may be asking for more trouble than some of us bargain for.
The Soviet Union wants to progress in these negotiations. The scale of change in the Soviet Union over the last two years is staggering to behold. I refer to the policies of openness and reconstruction, the massive dismissals, and the massive political and commercial changes. In his speech at the last party congress the Soviet leader actually denounced the system for not working and referred to such matters as corruption. He announced matters which none of us imagined would have been announced so quickly—multi-candidate elections within the party and the republics. The pilots to those elections have been announced. The point of this is not to sing the praises of what is happening so quickly, but to say that by any standards it is formidable if not fantastic in our conceptions of the Soviet Union and its system. It has created many problems in the Soviet Union, and anyone with any knowledge or feeling of that system must realise that any leader who introduces such matters so quickly needs to make progress. In the introduction of them he has made many enemies within one of the most conservative systems in the world.
If the West ignores the need within the Soviet Union to make international progress, and ignores the degree to which the proverbial neck has been stuck out, it does so at its peril. There is nothing permanent about the offer, and while we may be arguing about the minutiae among ourselves in an effort to get a united approach against something which on this side of the Atlantic, let alone on


the other side, sounds rather strange—with this mass of offers—if we delay too long those offers may not be there.
I want to address myself to the United Kingdom role in all of this and to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on her visit. Personal relations are important in foreign affairs and she obviously has a formidable relationship with Mr. Gorbachev.
Internationally, with regard to the British role, we must make vigorous representations to Washington and, dare I say it, I should like to see my right hon. Friend putting in nine, 10 or 11 hours with President Reagan as much as I would with Mr. Gorbachev—or rather I should say President Reagan and his advisers.
As to Europe, there is an undoubted need for greater defence co-operation. I welcome the speech that my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary made in that regard in the last fortnight. What I am saying mirrors certain feelings that the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) expressed in his speech. I would differ from him by saying that for such a contribution to be effective it must be a European rather than a British contribution, even in a multilateral context. If NATO is to survive as an Alliance, it must become more equal, and that means that we must have a more vigorous European defence policy.
There are enormous trade opportunities in our bilateral relations with the Soviet Union. We should trade with the Soviet Union, even if the result of that trade is that it becomes stronger in the sense that it becomes our commercial rather than military competitor.
We must continue to press on matters of human rights, but we must recognise what has already been done and allow time for changes within the Soviet system to take effect. We must press but we must not overdo it.
One of the best gestures that the Soviet Union made before the Prime Minister's visit—which it substantiated afterwards—was that there should be no jamming of the BBC Russian service. That was a formidable gesture.
I gave notice to my hon. Friend the Minister of State that I would mention the BBC external service and satellite television services. Early-day motion 846, an all-Conservative motion, had attracted 108 signatures by this morning and has gathered more. It reflects concern that the United Kingdom should not lose out by delaying a decision, bearing in mind that other countries are rapidly expanding their satellite television news services. We seem to be delaying the decision. Early-day motion 852, an all-party motion with widespread support, had attracted 157 signatures this morning and has since gathered more. That states that the BBC, through its outstanding record and international credibility, is by far the best instrument to put Britain's case abroad. Of my hon. Friends who signed the general motion I am pleased to say that 75 per cent. also signed the all-party, BBC-oriented motion. I invite the Minister of State to refer to that in his reply.
I have been as brief as I can and I end where I began. We must make progress. The opportunity is there, and history will judge the western Alliance harshly if we do not take advantage of it.

Mr. David Young: As day succeeds day the faces of the hostages in the Lebanon fade

from our memory. As week succeeds week their names also fade. The name that most people remember is that of Terry Waite. Many of the hostages are as much hostages of American policy as they are of the groups that hold them. Apparently, while claiming to oppose terrorism, the Americans were prepared to treat with terrorists behind the scenes when that served their own selfish interests. The Americans are no strangers to dealing with terrorists as they showed by their sleazy deals with the Contras.
It is not surprising that small terrorist groups in the Lebanon saw their opportunity and that the more cash and guns were handed out by the Americans, the more the currency in hostages increased and continued. I am not anti-American, but I am a little careful about the present occupant of the presidency. Providing that he is not impeached, he will retain that post for another two years. However I think that he is impervious to the reactions of the middle east. That is illustrated by his bombing of Libya, which was endorsed and underwritten, I am sad to say, by the United Kingdom Government.
If the United States President was after those guilty of the La Belle nightclub bombing in Berlin, where many Americans died, evidence shows that he got the wrong country. If the object was military targets, a recent television film shows clearly how indiscriminate that targeting was. Women, children and other civilians paid with their lives for an American action endorsed and supported by the British Government.
That was an act of vengeance. It did not deal with terrorism. I can imagine the outcry in the House if we released Fl11s to deal with terrorists in Northern Ireland. The Americans' blunt instrument turned many Arabs away, not only from the United States but from the United Kingdom. It is sad that we are being dragged along to be regarded by many in the Arab community not as people to whom they can turn for justice but as potential enemies.
No country has suffered more in the middle east than the Lebanon. During the civil war about 10 per cent. of the people have become casualties, being seriously wounded or killed. There will be no solution to the Lebanon problem until all foreign troops, be they Syrian or Israeli, are removed from that country. Only then can we hope to achieve stability.
The greatest casualties in the Lebanon tragedy are the refugees in the Palestinian refugee camps of Bourj-albarajneh, Chatila and Rashideyeh. The camps have been under siege since last October or November. Medical teams report that the blockade causes a complete lack of food and medical supplies.
One camp houses 12,000 and another, 5,000. The estimated casualties in the camps amount to almost 5,000. So severe is malnutrition and starvation that medical teams say that many mothers cannot produce milk for their infant children. But there is no replacement for such milk. British people serve on those medical teams and the House will want to pay tribute to all those who work under such difficult and dangerous conditions to preserve life. The medical teams report that mothers and children are shot if they try to leave the camps to find food. In Chatila camp, for example, no anaesthetics or antibiotics are available.
Hospitals, like the camps, have been subject to intense artillery bombardment. In one camp it is estimated that there have been about 200 direct hits from artillery on the


hospital. The hospital at the Chatila camp has been reduced from four to two storeys. The camps are short not only of food and medical supplies but of clean water.
The crucial shortage in those camps is fuel. Without fuel they not only cannot cook, but they cannot work the pumps that raise clean water. In effect the people are literally drinking their own sewage. That is the position for thousands and thousands of people. To start with, they were refugees and were deprived of human dignity. Now they are existing—that is the only word to describe their lives—from day to day.
When we talk in the Chamber today about human rights we must think of the human rights of the men, women and children in those Palestinian refugee camps in the Lebanon. Hunger strikes there mean that members of the family give up eating to try to preserve the lives of others. They face escalating casualties and the fact that almost 95 per cent. of some of the camps have been destroyed.
I am aware that grants of money have been given to help the refugees, but what we need more than anything else is an international solution of the problem. There will be no peace in the middle east until a solution is fund to the Palestine question. That solution will not solve every problem in the middle east, but it will be a giant step forward. It is no good talking of maintaining human rights, removing terrorism, or peace in the middle east—escalating conflict in the middle east could be a major factor in an international war—unless the countries of the West, including Britain, realise that they must back the resolution of this problem. We can no longer be prepared for the United States, which is a prisoner of Israel, time after time to block a solution. We need a resolution of this key question. Without it we shall see no peace in our time in the middle east.

Mr. David Howell: Praise has rightly been heaped upon my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for her brillantly successful Soviet visit. I would like to add a word of warm praise for my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary, whose patient work over the years helped to prepare for the recent visit. Successes such as the Soviet visit by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister do not happen out of the blue. That visit was the result of an immense amount of work by my right hon. and learned Friend and we should recognise that. I should also like to pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend for the way in which he has opened our eyes to what is going on in eastern and central Europe in recent years. My right hon. and learned Friend has paid many visits to that area. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym) mentioned those visits.
There is no doubt that the mood in eastern Europe has changed as those countries have begun to come out of the extraordinary time warp in which they existed and consumers have begun to raise their sights, look westwards and want more. It is questionable whether those countries can cross the Rubicon of political reform into a genuine capitalist system without bringing the Soviets straight down on their backs.
On a recent visit to Budapest my impression was that the country was full of people good at enterprise, who wish to develop an enterprise system, but who live in intense fear that if they move too quickly and go too far the iron

heel will be down on them immediately. I heard the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) talk about empires, but there can be no more vivid example of living under the imperial yoke than the atmosphere that pervades a country such as Hungary. That country is looking increasingly to the West. It has a tradition of enterprise and capitalism, but it dare not move for fear of bringing the iron heel down upon it.
I should also like warmly to associate myself with the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Leed, East (Mr. Healey) concerning the late David Watt. He was a good friend of mine and it was a horrifying and miserable thing to hear of his death. Although I did not agree with him on every issue, nevertheless he was a stimulating, fair-minded person and it is a tragedy that he has gone.
Obviously, after the Soviet visit, the focus of the debate has been on east-west relations and a balance of forces in Europe and the Atlantic area. I suggest to my hon. Friends and hon. Members that it is as well to remember that the world's second richest and third most powerful nation—the third super power of the late 1980s—lies outside that area. I refer to Japan. It is the Japanese dimension to our affairs and our overseas policies on which I wish to dwell for a few moments. I do not believe that it is wholly unrelated to our narrower discussions of the world within Europe and the possibilities now open to us by Soviet disarmament proposals.
I was glad to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary say that, when it comes to relations with Japan, the aim is to increase market access. Apparently our policy is a liberalising intention and a commitment to free trade. If that is so, I am bound to say that the idea of threatening to revoke Japanese banking licences and pushing the Japanese institutions out of London seems a questionable way of achieving that aim. I have long argued that we should have a much more comprehensive approach to Anglo-Japanese relations. In that way we could deal with such crises as they occur rather than waiting until something goes disastrously wrong and then making threatening noises or proposing measures that may not do much more than damage the United Kingdom.
I appreciate that the present economic dispute with Japan is extremely irritating. Indeed, it is one of many irritating things—the Scotch whisky curb and the habit of placing absurd standards On imports. I appreciate why people are concerned about the saga of Cable and Wireless. But I urge my right hon. Friends to think extremely carefully about the idea of placing curbs on Japanese institutions and on the free entry of Japanese finance institutions to the City of London. I urge them to keep the question of financial institutions and our opportunities to get into Tokyo separate from the issue of the Cable and Wireless investment in the second telecommunications system in Japan. I believe that my right hon. and hon. Friends are aware that we have not heard the full story about Cable and Wireless—nothing like it. There are many ramifications that may not lend themselves to emotional utterances in the House, but they must be studied carefully before we go at half-cock on that issue.
As a nation we are committed to the open trading system and for that reason I was encouraged by my right hon. and learned Friend's remarks. We must remain committed. The suggestion that we are prepared to move away from that commitment when we are faced with minor squalls in economic matters represents a worrying


route. The strands go deep, and we must be careful that what appears to be a temporary deviation does not become a habit. The main aim of world economic policy at the moment is to get countries such as Japan to spend much more and expand much faster. The policy is not to put up more barriers by retaliation or to move the world into a cycle of protectionism.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although the toleration that he is spelling out, with which I agree wholeheartedly, is admirable, none the less there must come a point when Japanese penetration of our markets becomes intolerable? At that stage we must act from strength to get the Japanese to open their markets to our imports. How does my right hon. Friend believe we can do that?

Mr. Howell: My hon. Friend anticipates me. I shall describe in a moment how we should proceed rather than how we should not proceed in this matter.
I have mentioned two reasons why short-term retaliatory threats are not the right way. The third and fundamental reason is that the idea of each country being in bilateral payments balance with another country is utterly absurd. It means nothing at all. It may happen that we have a large current deficit with Japan. We have an even larger current deficit with Germany. But in neither case is that a meaningful economic concept. The flow of trade is triangular or quadrilateral—or many-sided—in a variety of countries at different levels of processes and products. The proposition that we must work to obtain an equal balance of trade with each country and that something is wrong if we do not belongs to the world of fantasy. It is certainly not a guide to policy, or should not be.
Japanese exports have been falling recently and Japanese imports have been rising rapidly—15 per cent. in volume in the past two years. If a little patience is shown, because of the enormous appreciation in the yen, we shall see a major impact on the Japanese balance. That will take time. In the meantime, people want instant results and we have the sort of dramas that we had only a few days ago.
Another reason why the open threats that we have heard so far are not valuable is that they are incredible. They do not carry any weight. Everyone knows that if we were to prevent the movement of financial institutions into the City of London, or demand the removal of those already here, they would go elsewhere. If it is suggested that somehow they could be kept out of the EC, there are other countries in Europe that are not in the EC that would find it hard to say no to them. Switzerland is the obvious example.
If I may stick for a moment on the negative side, there is one more reason why it is a mistake to deal in terms of open retaliatory threats. My young son, who learns judo at school, or it may be karate—I am not very good on these things—tells me that the secret of wrestling with rivals in those styles and techniques is to let a rival's own weight work against him. That is extremely good advice in dealing with the colossally powerful Japanese economy.
The truth is that the weight of Japan today is its staggering prosperity; its enormous capacity to save and to generate investment. Its weakness is that it is not an effective part of the global security system. It has grown

powerful and has lived by the belief—which is a complete anachronism in today's integrated defence and financial systems—that it is a small island that can safeguard its vulnerability as far as possible and lie low, and that as long as it does that it need not fulfil any responsibilities in the international global system. That is no longer true. It is no longer true of defence and it is no longer true, and it has not been so in Japan for some years, of energy and, in particular, oil. The question of Gulf and middle east stability is central to the survival and development of a peaceful Japanese society, and many Japanese recognise that.
Above all, we should be pressing Japan on its weak point—the failure of that giant so far to contribute to the global security system even remotely on the sort of scale commensurate with its enormous prosperity, size and importance in the world's economic system. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield made some points on that, although I cannot remember whether he gave a figure. Japan spends about $12 billion a year on so-called self-defence against the $24 billion or $25 billion a year that Britain spends, yet Japan has a GNP three times the size of ours. We should now be pressing the Japanese on precisely that point. If they are to expand and prevent the world economy going into recession, of which there is a great danger now, it may well be that on defence spending, among other things, there is room for expansion.
Dr. Kissinger told some of us the other day that that is all very dangerous. He said that we could not let the Japanese spend more on defence because that would lead again to the rise of militarism in Asia, of which we have seen horrific consequences in the past and of which we do not want any more. I think that he is looking too much at the past. We are talking not about the rise of national militarism, or its dangers, but about a gigantic nation—the world's second richest—contributing to the incredibly expensive global security system.
The reality is that the SS20s that are pointing at Europe and that we want taken out of the INF system are also deployed in Asia, for reasons that I have never quite understood. Certainly they do not harmonise closely with the idea of the Soviet Union as entirely benign. But the point is that if Japan wants the intermediate nuclear missiles to be removed, and if it wants to move into the post-INF order, it will have to consider playing a much bigger part in the global defence system that follows.
We have all heard enough in this debate to understand that the zero option is bound to mean in the short term, and I suspect in the long term as well, increased expenditure on conventional forces to make some match with Soviet Union superiority, although we have argued about how great that superiority is. It is also bound to mean, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has pointed out, a considerably enhanced importance for British and French nuclear weapons. It is also bound to mean, as we have already heard from leading German authorities, that they now have a growing interest in seeking some kind of French or Franco-British nuclear protection. Those things are already happening.
But it is not only western Europe which will be more vulnerable in the new post-INF situation if it comes about. Japan will be vulnerable too. If anyone has any doubts about that, he should read the speech that Mr. Gorbachev made in Vladivostok when he visited that part of the world the other day, when he said clearly that there would be


pressures, and that the Soviet Union would have interests in that end of its empire just as much as it has interests in eastern Europe.
Rather than trying to tackle Japan on specific pin-prick points—I am afraid that they are only pin pricks—we would do better to be pressing this gigantic nation, which will dominate the 1980s and 1990s, including our own interests, on defence expenditure, overseas investment and support for overseas and world development. We should also press that nation to be making a much larger contribution to science and technology internationally than it has done in the past.
The thought that I want to encapsulate in this short intervention is that we should certainly press the Japanese on opening their markets, as my right hon. and learned Friend says. That would be right. We have some reason in some areas to be irritated and I wish good luck to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. He has gone into the lion's den to explain how unacceptable and irritating some of those restrictions are. But also let us press the huge nation of Japan to become a much bigger and more open spender in defence and other areas of overseas investment. Let us realise that open threats of retaliation are not the subtle, clever or effective way in which to achieve the aim of expanding the world economy and maintaining the open free trade system.

Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Possibly the most important proposal to come out of the Prime Minister's visit to the Soviet Union was that more British schoolchildren will be able to visit Soviet families in their homes. Therefore, unlike the Prime Minister, they will not take until their 61st year to realise that in the Soviet Union are real people with the same sort of aspirations as the rest of us in the world who want peace, who are striving for a decent standard of living and who hold out the hand of friendship to people throughout the world.
The Prime Minister, in her speech at the Kremlin dinner, mentioned the memories of the second world war. Speaking of Britain, she said that our great cities had been bombed night after night. My first memories of the Soviet Union go back to the days when, as a child, I spent a year and a half sleeping every night in an Anderson air-raid shelter at the back of the garden. I remember the eight consecutive nights in Liverpool when we faced the wrath of Hitler's Luftwaffe. We faced many other nights of bombing in that city, too. Liverpool was the second worst-bombed city in the country after London.
In May 1941 we faced the May blitz, but I also remember what happened after 22 June 1941. Then we came in for a quieter time, and things became easier. There were not so many air raids. Those of us who remember Liverpool in those days remember the words that were spoken during the second world war by a former Conservative Member of Parliament, Mr. Duff Cooper, who said that we should never forget the debt that the British people owed to the gallant Red Army. I shall never forget that debt and I shall never forget what we owe to the Russians. Many people, inside and outside the House, are alive because of the valour of the Soviet army during those years. That was borne out in a speech made by Winston Churchill at President Roosevelt's press

conference in Washington DC on 25 May 1943. We do well to remind ourselves of those days and of what Churchill said.

Mr. Andrew Hunter: rose——

Mr. Wareing: I shall not give way. Many hon. Members still want to speak and I do not want to take up more time. Churchill said :
The Russians have held the weight of 190 German divisions and 28 divisions of satellite axis nations. They have done what no one else could do—torn part of the guts out of the German war machine. They have been grand allies in the heroic fashion".
Yes, there are those in this country who will remember what we owed to the Red Army during the second world war.
I went on my first visit to the Soviet Union in 1967. I was not part of any delegation. My wife and I simply got in my car in Liverpool, drove to the Soviet Union via Viborg and visited Leningrad, Novgorod and Moscow. We met ordinary people in those places. That was 20 years ago, and I realised then that there is more to compare between our two countries than there is to contrast—certainly as regards ordinary 'people. The Prime Minister is just gleaning a little of that truth.
Let us examine what the Soviet Union has had to suffer. It has faced three invasions from the West in this century. During the revolution and civil war 14 nations invaded the Soviet Union. It was attacked by Germany during the first world war and invaded during the second world war—an invasion that saved many of our necks. European Russia was devastated in 1945, but the Russians built up their country for the second time this century. That calls in question the attitude of those Tories who belittle the economic system in the Soviet Union. I would not support every facet of the system there—of course I would not—but where, if not in the Soviet Union, has the real economic miracle taken place since 1945? If its system is so weak, what are the Tories afraid of? Why do they think that Mr. Gorbachev and the Soviet Government are just waiting for us to give up nuclear weapons so that they can launch an attack?
After all the euphoria of the Prime Minister's visit and the propaganda of the Tory press that was associated with it, one thing emerged: the real differences between the position of the Prime Minister and that of President Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev, who have said that they want denuclearisation and an end to nuclear weapons. The Prime Minister alone holds the view that we should support the continuance of nuclear weapons. Mr. Gorbachev does not agree that nuclear deterrence is the only way of averting war. What sane person would disagree with him?
I was fortunate in 1984—thanks largely to the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris)—to be introduced to the Soviet leader. I did not spend nine hours or 28 minutes with him, but I was fortunate enough to have 10 minutes. I was impressed by his attitude to nuclear weapons, and I remember him telling me that the Soviet Union would never turn its weapons against those countries that did not have nuclear weapons on their soil.
The Prime Minister, however, still argues that a world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for us all. If she is right, why should not every country have its own nuclear arsenal? Let us all have nuclear arms. Does anyone seriously believe that the world


would be a safer place, and that there would not be an even greater risk of an accidental outbreak of nuclear conflict? Mr. Gorbachev has offered to negotiate not only on the issue of nuclear arms but on conventional reductions, too.
What concessions do we offer? The Foreign Secretary has spoken of constraints on shorter-range weapons, yet at this very time the United States army, supported by the United Kingdom, has deployed the W79 8-inch artillery shell in West Germany. That is a weapon with a potential neutron capability, a fact that was hidden from this House for a number of years after the Montebello proposals.
The Prime Minister has talked of keeping the peace by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan. I and my hon. Friends believe that it is highly desirable that the Afghanistan people should be allowed rightful self-determination, but freedom to choose one's own Government should not end in Afghanistan. That right—the Prime Minister often speaks of freedom of choice—must include the right of the peoples of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Angola to throw off their oppressors and seek economic solutions that are different from the ones that we would choose—solutions that are not to the liking of international finance capitalism.
The right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym) spoke of Communism in one breath and the dangers of subversion in the next. The only subversion that we have heard about that has threatened the British Government has come in the form of the allegations in Peter Wright's book. It is alleged that the Government of Harold Wilson were in danger of being subverted by the agents of the CIA and of others who wanted to ensure that democracy produced the right results in the eyes of American capitalism. The Harold Wilson Government were not in danger of being subverted by the agents of Moscow.
The Prime Minister has said that the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan will have a crucial part to play in the future of Afghanistan and in deciding how others see the Soviet Union, whether they trust it or fear it. The same must be true of the Americans, who have occupied Grenada and who currently occupy the Guantanamo base in Cuba without the approval of the Cuban Government. Equally, the same must be true of the United States Government continually giving support to the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, to the UNITA South African-backed forces in Angola and to other regressive forces elsewhere in the world.
The Prime Minister has the audacity to go to the Soviet Union to talk about human rights. The Soviet General Secretary made one or two comments about that, and I believe that they are well worth repeating. At the Kremlin dinner, Mr. Gorbachev said that he hoped that his word would be heard openly and loudly in the West by the millions who are unemployed, the homeless, the destitute, by those beaten by the police and victimised in court—like the Liverpool city councillors—and by those whose civil rights and dignities are subjected to glaring discrimination because of the colour of their skin.
The Prime Minister has been a Member of this place since 1959 and we look in vain for any early-day motion which she has signed opposing oppressions by the Pinochet regime in Chile or by the dictatorships of Salazar and Caetano in Portugal. The right hon. Lady was a Member of this place when those two were in control of

affairs in Portugal, and the same applies to the colonels' regime in Greece. We can look in vain for the name of the Prime Minister being signed in opposition to oppression and violation of human rights in any of the countries to which I have referred.
To send the Prime Minister to Moscow to preach human rights is like sending a burglar to inaugurate a home-watch scheme. When she visited the Soviet Union the Soviet Government were generous enough to allow her to see the dissidents Mr. Sakharov, Mrs. Bonner and Mr. Begun. I hope that Mr. Gorbachev will take up the Prime Minister's invitation to revisit Britain. When he does so, I hope that he will be allowed to see our unemployed, homeless and old people who have had their heating allowances reduced and are endangered by the threat of hypothermia every winter. I hope that he will visit Liverpool and Tyneside to see our dissidents. I hope also that one day we shall have a Prime Minister who feels as popular and as safe in Liverpool and on Tyneside as the present Prime Minister felt last week in Moscow and Tbilisi.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I appeal for short speeches because I understand that those who occupy the Front Benches may seek to reply at 9.20 pm.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) drew attention to the fact that we owe a great deal to the Soviet army because of its sacrifice during the second world war. The hon. Gentleman spoke about bombing, and the Chamber was bombed six weeks before the Soviet Union was attacked. We should not forget that Britain was involved in fighting against the Third Reich for some years before the Soviet Union was attacked.
Recently I had hoped to visit Moscow to be one of three Members of Parliament to be present at the British embassy to present awards to a certain group of refuseniks, including Mr. Josif Begun. I was glad that, instead of the three of us going, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was able to present the award herself. I feel that she was entitled to raise the issue of human rights. The Russian Government accepted the commitments in the Helsinki final accord relating to the free movement of people and ideas, and my right hon. Friend was entitled to request that the commitments be observed.
That issue has a relationship with arms control, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister stated in the House that the way in which the Soviet Union honours the Helsinki accord is an indicator of the way in which it would honour any other agreement. How it acts in respect of its own communities is evidence of its good intentions.
There is no doubt that those directly concerned wish the issue of human rights to be raised. Mr. and Mrs. Begun were quoted by the Prime Minister as saying:
There is a great deal to be done. Will the West please continue to make representations?"—[Official Report, 2 April 1987; Vol. 113, c. 1230.]
Apparently they believe that the changes that have taken place would not have happened in the absence of pressure from outside.
Mr. Gorbachev has said that he would look at humanitarian cases carefully and that wherever possible there would be positive results. I would like to raise the


case of one family which is known to me. In June 1975 Mrs. Cherna Goldort applied to the department of emigration in Novosibirsk in order to emigrate to Israel with her daughter Galina. She worked for a research institute for chemical technology and she signed an undertaking not to leave the Soviet Union for a period of five years after she had finished her work there. That period ended in 1976 but she was still refused an exit visa.
In 1979 Mrs. Cherna Goldort was summoned to an interview with General Slontezky, an official in the emigration department. The general said :
You have one daughter in Israel and another with you. If you want to be with both of them, then let Galina go, and it will be easier for you to receive permission for yourself.
Therefore, Galina was allowed to leave and she settled in Israel. Mrs. Cherna Goldort applied for an exit visa as General Slontezky had suggested but she was refused.
In October 1980 her two daughters in Israel appealed to the Madrid review of the Helsinki accords. They were informed that the official reason for refusal was the fact that Mrs. Goldort's two brothers remained in the Soviet Union. When her brothers went to meet the relevant officials to say that they did not wish to stand in the way of their sister emigrating, they were removed from the building by force.
Since that time Mrs. Cherna Goldort has had a heart operation and is not in good health. She has been refused an exit visa until at least 1995. Her letter states:
I am here … You are there and there is no end in sight.
I raise this case because I met her daughter Galina in the House of Commons with Martin Gilbert who is Sir Winston Churchill's official biographer. I promised to raise the matter with the British ambassador in Moscow.
The point is one of principle. Divided families should, wherever possible, be reunited on humanitarian grounds and in future there should be a higher regard for the Helsinki accords in the Soviet Union. We must appreciate, as was said earlier, how much has been done already and how much Mr. Gorbachev is trying to do. However, we should not underestimate the extent of the opposition to him within the KGB.
I am glad that the Prime Minister had the courage to raise these issues. It is particularly significant that she went on television, possibly before a much larger audience than any other Western leader. The commercial contracts worth £400 million and the various other agreements she has signed along with the Foreign Secretary are extremely important, including the new arrangements for an improved hot line between No. 10 and the Kremlin. It seems that those are remarkable achievements and full advantage should be taken of them. The Prime Minister's visit will act as a catalyst, not only in reducing tension but in making it easier to achieve future advantages in arms control and in human rights negotiations. In doing that, I believe that she has rendered a service to the Western democracies.

Mr. David Winnick: The Prime Minister's pre-election visit to the Soviet Union was far more concerned with television audiences in Britain than in the Soviet Union. It was clearly a pre-election public relations exercise, and there is no doubt that that is the view of most people in politics and the media. I am sure that that view is expressed in one way or another in the country as a whole. However, that is not to minimise in

any way the changes that are occurring in the Soviet Union, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) said. Those changes are of considerable importance. There is undoubtedly a welcome change of atmosphere and a climate where criticism is being permitted on a number of topics. It is especially expressed in films, plays and some books. The press is beginning to play a somewhat different role in the Soviet Union than it has played until recently.
The other evening I watched on "Newsnight" excerpts from a Soviet film that is playing to crowded audiences in the Soviet Union. The film is called "Repentance". The main character—he is certainly no hero in the film—is based largely on Beria, Stalin's criminal chief of the secret police, who had many other responsibilities. He did not survive Stalin for long. Clearly, the audience were happy to be able to watch a film that, to some extent at least, dealt frankly with a topic that, until now, could not be mentioned.
At long last, "Dr. Zhivago'' is to be published, and that is a welcome change. I well remember, in 1958, the uproar in the Soviet Union when that book was published in the West. Other publications and articles are appearing, and plays and films dealing with what, until now, have been sensitive and controversial themes are being shown That is all to the good.
I look forward to the time when Soviet citizens can leave and enter their country as we can leave and enter ours, and I believe that Soviet people should be able to enjoy that right. Moreover, this is the opportunity for the West to respond to the new atmosphere, and certainly to the repeated offers by the Soviet leadership to negotiate meaningfully on a wide range of subjects such as nuclear disarmament and arms control.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), I believe that most people in Britain feel that the United States has more responsibility for the failure to negotiate properly than has the Soviet Union. There is a widespread feeling here—one that I share—that there is no wish or enthusiasm on the part of the American Administration, and certainly not on the part of President Reagan, to respond constructively to what is happening in Moscow. There is too much enthusiasm for the status quo on nuclear weapons, for star wars and the rest.
Whatever view the British people take about unilateral nuclear disarmament, there :is no passion for nuclear weapons as such. However, the Prime Minister seems to have that passion. Her constant theme is that for the past 40 years peace has been kept because of them, and it will be maintained in the future only because of such weapons. There are two logical conclusions from that. The first is that there should be no reduction in nuclear weapons. According to her, that would be a danger to the continuation of peace. Secondly, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, why not spread this more widely? And instead of trying to limit the production of nuclear weapons by various countries, why not say that the more that have nuclear weapons in Europe, Africa and Asia, the more peace there will be? Is that not after all the logic of the Prime Minister's argument?
Our concern on the Labour Benches for human and democratic rights is universal. It is not confined by any means to the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. Of course the people in those countries do not enjoy anything like the civil liberties that we have. As I have often said, in the Labour movement, in the House, and elsewhere, if we have


these democratic rights, there is no reason why the people of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Hungary should not have them. That makes sense. However, there are double standards and they are not on this side of the House.
In 1973, when the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) was a junior Minister in the Foreign Office, he spoke about what had happened in Chile as a result of the armed coup. I gave the right hon. Gentleman notice that I would mention this. The Pope has just visited Chile and he went to the national stadium, where, as we know, following the coup thousands of people were held, and many were executed. The bodies were piled high. On 28 November, the right hon. Member for Pavilion said :
It is not possible for the Government of the United Kingdom to intervene everywhere all over the world. We do our best to protect human rights in the Council of Europe and through the United Nations, but it would be unrealistic to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries as suggested in the motion and it would also very often be, in our experience, counter-productive".—[Official Report, 28 November 1973; Vol. 865, c. 483.]
This illustrates that, when it comes to Chile, there is no great concern on the Tory side about human rights.
As I asked during an intervention, did the Prime Minister, in the week before she went to Moscow, lecture the King of Saudi Arabia when he came over here? Did she talk about human rights in that country? Could it be argued that the Prime Minister has been a champion defender of the rights of the black majority in South Africa? Is it not more accurate to say that, time and again, the Prime Minister has used every argument to stop effective British and international action being taken to undermine that notorious and evil regime in South Africa, which denies human rights to millions of people simply because of the colour of their skin?
Before lack of time compels me to finish, let me deal with another matter relating to Eastern Europe—that is Czechoslovakia. I note that Mr. Gorbachev is visiting that country this week. Like many others, I am very disturbed that two members of the Czechoslavakian Jazz Section were recently put in prison. Undoubtedly, there is a good deal of repression in Czechoslovakia—far more than there is at present in the Soviet Union—and we hope that that will change.
I should also like briefly to mention the Palestinians in the refugee camps in the Lebanon. I welcome the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Mr. Young), who made a passionate plea about those Palestinians. He is right; I cannot deny it. But, if I am interested in human rights in various parts of the world, should I not also be concerned about the human rights of the Palestinians?
I have no time now to deal with what has been happening in the camps, and to a large extent my hon. Friend has already dealt with it. However, I have always taken the view—and I make no apology for it—that Israel has as much right to existence as any other country. That remains my view, whether it is that of the majority or of the minority at any given time. It does not mean that I am not a very harsh critic of that country's policies. It does not mean either that I believe that the West Bank should be in Israel. But I do believe that there will be no lasting security in the middle east, or for Israel itself, until the solution is found for a Palestinian state. If the people

of Israel have a right to their country, the Palestinian people have no less a right to a state. It is absolutely essential that effective action is taken internationally to try to secure a settlement, and the Soviet Union and the United States certainly have a role to play in that.

Mr. Andrew Hunter: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for accelerating his comments. As you reminded us three minutes ago, Mr. Speaker, before the Front Bench takes over, the best prepared of all speeches must be cast aside.
If I had had longer, I would have wished to turn from five hours dominated by a debate on East-West relations—and the related feature of human rights and disarmament—to discuss a forgotten element in our foreign affairs debates of the past four months. I refer—after what the hon. Gentleman has just said—to South Africa.
There is, as I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will note, a lull in the debates and deliberations in this place on the affairs and fortunes of South Africa. It gives us time to reassess, to revalue and to take fresh stock. In that lull, let us recall that the objective is to see established in South Africa a form of Government that is acceptable to all races. The present Government have tried faithfully to pursue that objective.
During this time for reassessment, let us consider whether we should not make a more positive assessment of the role to be played in South Africa by the tribal leaders. In recent days, we have heard announcements and pronouncements about the possible establishment of an indabha in Kwazulu-Natal. We have also seen further advances towards genuine independence in Bophuthatswana. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will take on board the sincere plea that, in pursuing the encouragement of those who seek moderation and a peaceful solution acceptable to all races, he will listen to those voices of moderation from both black and white. Many Conservative Members wish to place on record their personal esteem for the move made by Denis Worrall in his courageous stand for Parliament in the approaching white minority general election.
With one minute to go, let me sum up my argument by saying that voices of moderation are at work in South Africa. Let the Government hear those voices, identify them, encourage them and reassess the low value that hitherto has been accorded to the leaders of tribal groupings in South Africa.

Mr. George Robertson: The debate has ranged across such a large number of issues that it will be impossible for the Minister and me to cover all of them this evening. However, all hon. Members will agree that it has been a fascinating debate. It has rightly concentrated on the Prime Minister's visit to the Soviet Union and all that it means to us. We look forward to hearing the Minister's predictions in his summing up, because he and the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) have seen their weekend predictions crumble into dust. The Minister is here to face the music this evening, but the right hon. Member for Devonport has probably not yet caught up with the fact that the election will not take place next


month. He, together with all his hon. Friends, is probably campaigning now in another part of the country or, who knows, in another part of the world.
Right hon. and hon. Members have referred to the Prime Minister's visit to Moscow. We welcome the fact that the trip was a success. It is not a grudging welcome; it is not forced. We are genuinely happy that the Prime Minister returned with such refreshing views of Mr. Gorbachev and of what he is doing and also with such enlightened sentiments about the future.
Hon. Members have pointed out that there are few tangible results from the days of walkabout, intimate chat and electorally appealing photography, but we do not deny the value of establishing trust with the general secretary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. Hon. Members have also pointed out that the climate for an agreement on intermediate nuclear forces was not helped before the visit by the Prime Minister having needlessly invented fresh conditions or linkages—from human rights to coincidental short range nuclear agreements. Hon. Members have pointed out, too, the glaringly obvious fact that negotiations on arms control, as distinct from after dinner speeches about the subject, are the property of Mr. Shultz next week. That does not detract for a moment from our genuine relief that the Prime Minister has now abandoned the empty rhetoric of the cold war and embraced the idea of dialogue and the establishment of trust with the Soviet Union.
When BBC4 listeners turned on their radios last Wednesday morning, 1 April, and heard the breathless tones of the Prime Minister when she said,
If he gave me his word, I would believe him",
many of them must have had good reason to feel that this was one of the broadcasters' jokes that had been specially created for that particular morning, but when they had woken up to the fact that it was genuine there was undoubtedly a collective sigh of relief that this would be a safer world than the world that we normally associate with the analyses of our national leader.
Now that the Prime Minister has caught up with the enlightened views of Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand, whom she tried to put off before she visited Moscow, perhaps she will now wend her way to Tokyo and use her now famous charm on Prime Minister Nakasone on a subject that has also exercised hon. Members in this debate.
Where, however, does this new re-think leave the Government's vision of Europe? The confusion of the signals from all sources must be a sign of ministerial nervousness about the election that looms over them and threatens them.
The Foreign Secretary made a speech in Brussels a couple of weeks ago which represented a complete volte face by the Government on the subject of Western European union. That speech, combined with his reported veto at the weekend on the European Community's strengthening its links with the United States, certainly suggests that the Foreign Secretary is still performing his act of getting into the Prime Minister's consciousness by making radical speeches rather than through the ignored Foreign Office memoranda which land on or are discarded from her desk.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: That suggests to me that the hon. Gentleman is giving far too much credence to what he reads in the newspapers. On the second point that he

made, he should not believe for one moment that I am seeking to stand in the way of effective co-operation across the Atlantic. We are all seeking to discover the best way of advancing it. On the first point, he just happened to have read the most recent speech. If he read the points which I made on many previous occasions, he would find no difference in the points of view. I acknowledge the incompleteness of his information.

Mr. Robertson: The Foreign Secretary may seek to clarify the record, but I do not think that he persuades very many people. It would perhaps help the House if major meetings of the Foreign Ministers of the European Community took place at the weekend. Perhaps then we could have a precise record of what happens at those meetings and a report from the Foreign Secretary or a junior Minister to the House of Commons to let us know precisely what takes place. I do not like relying on newspaper reports any more than the Foreign Secretary does, but sometimes the House of Commons has no alternative because it gets no more information from him.
Just as we welcome the Prime Minister's conversion, so too do we welcome the Foreign Secretary's conversion to the creation of robust Western European self-reliance, because we see the merit of Europe's starting to prepare for possible reductions in the physical United States presence on our continent.
It has to be said that the fashionable obsession which we hear about very often from the other side of the Atlantic via the airways with alleged American isolationism or the Americans' rejection of a role in Europe is knocked on the head by the splendid study of American opinion which was made by the authoritative and very distinguished Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. When its sample was asked about leaving troops in Europe, no less than 82 per cent. said that they should be left in Europe and only 16 per cent. said that they should be withdrawn. So the scaremongers who question the Atlantic relationship would be well advised to absorb this study.
If the Foreign Secretary is to fly such radical kites, we have the right to ask whether the Prime Minister flies them with him. While we more than welcome the objective of European equality with our American ally—and equality is what we seek with the Americans—there is no sign that the Prime Minister has abandoned her affection for the subservient, lap-dog approach which has characterised her premiership. We seek in vain signs that she has changed—but maybe the Foreign Secretary continues to work on her.
If evidence of the poverty of the right hon. Lady's strategy on Atlantic relationships is needed, it can be found in the news today from Westland, only a year after the forced marriage with the American partner took place and resulted in large numbers of redundancies. That is the partnership that brought so much chaos to the Government and that we were told at the time would protect jobs and protect Westland. We know precisely what value to place on the Government's record and their view of the way in which that relationship should develop.
The Foreign Secretary rightly mentioned the European Community but dealt inadequately with it. Two weeks ago we marked the 30th anniversary of the signing of the treaty of Rome. The celebrations in the United Kingdom were


appropriately muted as if to recognise that the 30-year-old European Community had little to celebrate other than the fact that it had survived at all until 1987.
The Community is beset with crises. The budget is still in financial chaos, with elastoplast ineffectively keeping all the cracks covered and with inventiveness confined to more and more desperate creative accountancy. Indeed, the week before last the Court of Auditors described the recent attempt at a budget as illegal. The common agricultural policy is still an uncontrolled shambles. The drive by Lord Cockfield to a barrierless Common Market by 1992 is already doomed because he fails to see that such a concept is impossible without the necessary and coincidental balances against the market dictating that all the benefits go to the strongest areas and member states.
Nothing betrays this Government's cynical betrayal of the European interest more than the fiasco of the European research programme. At the same time as the Foreign Secretary is preaching the virtue of European self-reliance our so-called technology Minister, the right hon. Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie), the Minister of State at the Department of Industry, is in there openly sabotaging the one programme which might make Europe competitive with those in the United States and in the far east who threaten us.
Britain stands alone—the only nation in Europe blocking the £4·5 million European framework research programme. We were abandoned by our last reluctant ally—West Germany—at the end of last week. We are attacked by everybody else in the Community. We are even isolated from the entire sycophantic group of Conservatives in the European Parliament. The Government project their image of King Canute on the beaches of high technology.
The Government embarrass the nation and disgrace our reputation with their inexplicable opposition to the most valuable and relevant of European programmes. That is true even if it did not contrast so starkly with the pusillanimous attitude to the out of control farm spending and food stockpiling. The Government add their words of opposition to that scandal, but their ineffectiveness is manifest.
But glorious opposition to a realistic research effort is the real fighting ground for the neanderthals in Downing street and the Treasury. When it comes to destroying the European capacity to recover in high technology, it is small wonder that even the Conservative research spokesman in the European Parliament, Mr. Amedee Turner, said that the Pattie position was "becoming untenable"—delicately put. The CBI disagrees with the Government, the other 11 countries of the Community disagree with them, the 63 Tory Members of the European Parliament disagree with them. Their case is isolated and discredited. We get more from European Community research programmes than we pay in, but the stubborn, irrational resistance goes on. We are made a laughing stock and branded as short-sighted by the rest of the Community.
Our cynicism is not alone in European Community politics. The West Germans, refreshed by a general election when the Christian Democrats won another majority, are now entering the cynicism game to equal our Government. Last Thursday in Bad Godesburg, West Germany, I listened to a speech by the opposite number

of the hon. Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker),. Dr. Inngard Adam-Schwaetzer, the Minister of State in the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic, who said :
There is no alternative to the continuing integration of the member states of the European community. This sometimes requires that we put our national interests behind us.
When next day I looked in the British newspapers for this declaration of faith in the European Community, what headlines did I see:
West Germans warn EEC that their own interests come first".
It was a betrayal of the ideal by those who preached that European unity is what matters and that national interest must be pulled behind us. The prospects for a resolution of the major financial crisis in the European Community have diminished with each act of cynical self-interest.[Interruption.] I ignore the sedentary interruptions from Government Members whose heckling reaches new heights. Election fever is now overcoming even the Foreign Secretary, who is carried away by that prospect.
The middle east is of common concern to us all. There must be widespread relief in this House that the disgraceful siege of the Palestinian camps in Beirut may have begun to end. This serious issue has been raised by the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Walters) and by my hon. Friends the Members for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and for Bolton, South-East (Mr. Young).
The slow starvation of the tragic inhabitants of the camps at Chatila and Bourj-al-Barajneh has been a real horror that has been given wholly insufficient attention by the world community. One can only compare the attention and concern that we paid to the slow, calculated and cynical attempted destruction of these people with all the attention that was given to the attack on them by the Christian militia. When Jews help Christians to destroy Arabs it is an outrage to humanity, but when Arabs starve Arabs it is viewed simply with concern and resignation. The sieges are not over yet. Maximum pressure must be put on all parties to get them stopped immediately.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East is right to remind the House of the British citizens who still languish kidnapped in the back streets of Beirut. Our friend Terry Waite is the best known but certainly not the only one whose fate still remains unknown but for whom we still keep our hopes high.
We welcome the Foreign Secretary's report that the European Community has now launched a new initiative by convening an international conference on the middle east. With the Americans apparently opting out of the process, and with new responsibilities lying all the more heavily and onerously on the shoulders of the European Community, it is vital that the momentum be maintained even if the outcome is far from clear.
There are some welcome signs in the middle east. The Americans do not seem to be so opposed to an international conference. Mr. Shimon Peres is continuing the effort of persuading his Prime Minister of the merits of some dialogue in this area. The Soviet Union is making historic, if tentative, moves towards recognising Israel. King Hussein is also making valiant efforts to deal with both the Palestinian case and the Syrians. The key to progress in the middle east lies in Syria. If King Hussein's visit to Damascus last Friday is productive, then a glimmer of hope may exist.
But if Mr. Tindemans' perambulations round the middle east bring back one message, it must be that


nothing will happen in the troubles of the middle east, the Lebanon or the West Bank without the involvement of Syria. What happens then? What do the British Government do at that point? Is there not a case for reviewing—in the light of developments since we broke off diplomatic relations—our relationship with Syria? Surely it is better to do that than to find ourselves, as so often before, out-manoeuvred by our Community partners and forced to change against our will.
Many other subjects of central importance to this country and its future were raised in this debate, including the whole question of central America and the trade war with Japan that we seem to be on the brink of. The right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), who is not in his place, remarkably chose to deal with that in his speech.
Finally, I wish to comment on a subject mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North, human rights in eastern Europe. We have heard much about human rights in the past few days and, as my hon. Friends have said, we have strong views about such issues. We do not have the same partisan view about human rights that is so often displayed by individuals on Opposition Benches. However, I entirely endorse the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North about the Czech repression of the Jazz Section of the Czech musicians' union. Suppressing ordinary musicians as though they were commercial criminals persuades no one outside Czechoslovakia that their actions are right. I returned an invitation to attend a conference in Czechoslovakia, declining on the ground that I could not accept an invitation to a country which acted in that way towards people who were simply practising their music.
The Prime Minister's visit to Moscow may yet turn out to be a watershed representing the point when at last she saw that there was a common destiny for the world and that the idea of frozen hostile camps at each other's throats could have no sense in a world with split-second timed weapons of mass destruction. If that is the case, we will welcome the dawning of the blindingly obvious and the world will perhaps be slightly safer as a result.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tim Renton): I certainly agree with the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) that this is a very hard debate to summarise, especially in the 19 minutes now left to me. In the course of the debate we have been taken down some extremely interesting avenues. For example. my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) referred to the possible reunification of Germany and my hon. Friend the Member for Esher (Sir C. Mather) mused on what might have happened if we had stayed in Palestine and if we still exercised strict influence over the Persian gulf. Unfortunately, I do not have time to pursue those interesting thoughts. I must come straight to the detailed points raised in the debate.
First, I must state how very much I agree with all hon. Members, and most recently my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), who referred to the enormous success of the recent visit of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary to Moscow. It most certainly was an enormous success and I thank the hon. Member for Hamilton for adding his tribute.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and other Opposition Members could not

be as generous. When those Opposition Members referred to my right hon. Friend's visit in the disparaging terms that they used, the words "sour grapes" came to mind. They simply cannot stand the thought that a Conservative Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary were so well received and so attentively listened to in Moscow.
The question of human rights has been much referred to in the debate and quite rightly. We shall try to look into the human rights case specifically mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West. I can tell the hon. Member for Hamilton that I met members of the Jazz Section and members of Charter 77 when I was in Prague a few weeks ago. The Czech Government already know what we think about the trial of the members of the Jazz Section and we shall puruse that matter.

Mr. Winnick: Will the Minister give way on that point?

Mr. Renton: No. I have many points to answer.
We heard a great deal about human rights. However, there is a strange and curious affliction that appears to strike down Opposition Members. That is the compulsion to shout "Chile" or "South Africa" whenever the subject of human rights abuses in the Soviet Union is raised. I must make the point that it is a peculiar idea that somehow human rights abuses in one country cancel out those in another. This Government take up human rights abuses wherever they occur—in the Lebanon, in Chile, in South Africa or in the Soviet Union. A particular point about human rights abuses in the Soviet Union is that the Helsinki accord imposed upon signatories precise obligations. Therefore, there is a duty and an obligation to focus on and highlight abuses of human rights in the Soviet Union and in eastern Europe. Moreover, for years these abuses have been systematic and institutionalised.
During the debate a number of Opposition Members, notably the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and the hon. Members for Walsall, North and for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), talked about the Prime Minister's love of nuclear weapons. Nuclearphilia was the word used by the right hon. Member for Leeds., East. It is sad but not surprising that Opposition Members follow this propaganda line. The Soviet Union has 50 times more nuclear missiles than us.

Mr. Winnick: The Prime Minister does love nuclear weapons.

Mr. Renton: It is foolish for the hon. Gentleman to say that the Prime Minister loves them. NATO cruise and Pershing deployments were a response to Soviet INF deployments, which now total over 900 warheads. Even under Mr. Gorbachev, new Soviet nuclear systems have been deployed in Europe. In a wise and measured speech my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym) said that the gap in defence capability continues to widen in favour of the Soviets. As that is true, the talk of a nuclear-free world is nothing but that—just talk, aspiration and dreams.
We cannot disinvent nuclear weapons. They will continue to be deployed for many years, and as long as there is a civil nuclear industry, and that is growing all the time, nuclear material will be created. As long as nuclear weapons are there and as long as they represent a threat to our security, it would be irresponsible madness for this country unilaterally to surrender its own deterrent.
The Opposition often think that by cancelling Trident and spending more money on conventional weapons they


would achieve such a balance that they would be able to do without nuclear weapons. However, Trident's share of the defence budget will, on average, be no more than 3 per cent. In the peak years of the procurement process its share will be less than 6 per cent. Planned future expenditure takes full account of the Trident programme in the same way as it takes account of any other major project. Indeed, the Tornado programme has been much more expensive than Trident will be.
Further, it is known that the Warsaw pact countries have a superiority over NATO of about 30,000 tanks in the central region of Europe. If Trident were cancelled and all that money was spent on other equipment, over a 20-year period all the Trident resources would buy just slightly more than one armoured division with 300 tanks. That includes the infrastructure, support and running costs. The Opposition should think about those figures. What is the purpose of just 300 more tanks in one armoured division when the Warsaw pact countries have 30,000 more than us in the central region of Europe?
I shall now turn from arms control to some of the many other matters raised in the debate. The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) asked about the death threat against Dr. Pauline Cutting. As the hon. Gentleman will understand, we very much condemn the reported threats. I pay tribute to the courage of Dr. Cutting who carries out vital humanitarian work in difficult and dangerous conditions. There is little that the Government can do at present, but we are certainly ready to help with arrangements for Dr. Cutting to leave when conditions permit. We call on all concerned to end the violence and to allow free access to the camps for food and medicines.
A number of hon. Members including the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) and for Dundee, West raised the question of the Lebanon. I fully agree with them that the press reports about the situation in the camps are deeply disturbing. The current situation is very confused. There are conflicting reports about whether the ceasefire is holding or has been breached and we do not know about the extent to which food will continue to get into the camps.
In his opening remarks my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State referred to the further aid that we have recently given to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The scope for United Kingdom action is limited, but we shall consider what we can do.

Mr. Ernie Ross: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Renton: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I should like to continue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Walters) raised the question of the international conference. We support the principle of an international conference and we are co-operating in setting it up with the United Nations Secretary-General. We are not overoptimistic. It is right that the modalities should be worked out in advance to ensure that the conference, if it takes place, is a success. We accept that at the moment the international conference seems to be the only way of taking the peace process forward, and therefore we are playing our part in the relevant discussions.
The hon. Member for Hamilton referred to the fact that the Belgian Foreign Minister, Mr. Tindemans, who is now

President of the Foreign Affairs Council, is shortly going to Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr. Peres, is going to Madrid, Rome and Belgium. That shows that there is a certain momentum in the peace process, and we hope that it will be successful.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westbury asked about the Soviet Union. We have agreed with the Soviets on the urgency of getting the peace process moving. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State found that Mr. Shevardnadze's ideas on an international conference were not far from his own. In so far as we see a place for all five members of the Security Council in the international conference, there is acceptance that the Soviet Union will have to be involved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Esher raised the question of Count Tolstoi's books and the massacres of displaced persons. He spoke movingly on that issue. I understand his deep concern. It has been the subject of much discussion over the years. The best contribution that the Government can make is to facilitate access to official records, which we do under the 30-year rule. The official records relating to post-war policy on repatriation have been open to scrutiny for more than a decade. It is not the business of the Government to reach a verdict on such issues, but I understand the strong feelings which lay behind my hon. Friend's remark, in which he utterly rejected the thesis that the late Lord Stockton was involved in a devious plot.
I was asked about Greece and Turkey. We welcome the restraint that has been shown by both sides. Confrontation is clearly in no one's interests and we are glad that Greece and Turkey are talking directly with each other. It is not for us to take sides in that dispute. It is best solved by direct negotiations, but we welcome Lord Carrington's offer of good offices.
I return to the opening remarks of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East, even though he is not in the Chamber. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East said that the right hon. Member for Leeds, East had trivialised foreign affairs. That was a kindness. I have only one word for his speech—dreadful. As a reward for publicly abandoning his beliefs and supporting policies that he knows are nonsense the right hon. Member has been promoted to the post of the Labour party court jester, doing comic turns and trying in vain to amuse his dispirited Back Benchers. Every comic wants to play Hamlet, but it is sad to see a formerly serious actor volunteering to play the clown.

Mr. Winnick: The Minister is the clown.

Mr. Renton: As the days pass, his ability to fantasise increases. For example, on 25 March he made the astonishing claim on the "Today" programme that the zero-option was a Labour party proposal made in a Healey-Foot visit to Moscow in September 1981 and adopted later by President Reagan.
Nice try. We never learnt what Mr. Brezhnev said in reply. Unfortunately, the zero-option was discussed in NATO for months before President Reagan announced it in November 1981. It was even debated in the Bundestag in May 1981. Moreover, whatever his views in 1981, the right hon. Member for Leeds, East had clearly abandoned the zero-option by 1983 because on 31 October he commended to the House Mr. Andropov's offer to cut


SS20s in Europe to 140. He said that it was made not to negotiate on this offer because it would give the West a very good deal.
It is sometimes said that the alliance has no policies. I do not think that that is fair. The alliance has yards of policies—at last two for every subject. However, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed has been the only member of the Liberal party present and no SDP member has attended at all.
It is convenient to have variations on policy to deploy depending upon the audience, but it leads to confusion, certainly within the alliance. I well remember the statement in the House during our last foreign affairs debate on 9 March by the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright) who said that, fortunately, he was not responsible for Liberal policies. I can sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's wish to dissociate himself from the alliance's loony Left but if the alliance spokesman for defence is not responsible for alliance defence policies, who is?
Mr. Gorbachev's treatment of the Prime Minister confirmed her status as a senior Western leader. Britain's standing in the world has seldom been higher. Given our long list of foreign policy successes, that is not surprising. We have achieved agreement with China on Hong Kong, guaranteeing a stable and secure future for the Hong Kong people. Within the European Community, contrary to the artificial indignation of the hon. Member for Hamilton, we have negotiated a favourable settlement on the longstanding budget dispute. We have played a key role in improving Community decision-making and in speeding up the creation of a single market in which goods, peoples and services can circulate freely.
The Gibraltar border has been reopened and negotiations have been started with Spain on the differences over Gibraltar. We played a leading role in the Stockholm conference on disarmament in Europe, which was successfully concluded last autumn. In Geneva last summer I was proud to table our proposals on challenge inspection, the ultimate test of verification for chemical weapons. Those proposals are now being carefully considered.
We have maintained a substantial aid programme totalling nearly £4 billion since 1983. We have responded quickly and generously to appeals for emergency aid in Africa. Meanwhile, we are giving bilateral aid to 120 countries.
Most important, we have maintained Britain's firm commitment to national defence and to the NATO Alliance, while promoting closer European defence cooperation, not least, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Pavilion suggested, through a revived Western European Union. We have worked steadily for a more stable relationship between East and West and for balanced and verifiable reductions in nuclear and conventional weapons.
Those achievements have come as a result of determination, persistence, consistency and reliability. I note with great pleasure the credit given for those achievements to my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary by my right hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) and for Guildford (Mr. Howell). It is no wonder that other European leaders said that the Prime Minister spoke for Europe when she visited Moscow. Other Governments know where we stand and what we stand for. I contrast that with Labour party policy. All parties in Opposition face the problem of achieving consistency in foreign policy because they often have to react to issues as they come along. But the Labour party has achieved that because its members have all rallied under the disreputable banner of anti-Americanism.
If the Leader of the Opposition can say that there is an almost miserable equality of threat between the United States and Russia, if he attacks the United States on Libya, Grenada, SDI and signs an advertisement inThe Guardian describing President Reagan as continuing a brutal terrorist war against Nicaragua, how can he expect to be taken seriously in Washington or other western capitals?
The Labour party has achieved a unique double. It has lost the respect of both Washington and Moscow. Soon it will be a triple crown as it will lose the respect of the British electorate as well.

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the Family Law Reform Bill[Lords], the Minors' Contracts Bill[Lords], the Recognition of Trusts Bill[Lords] and the Reverter of Sites Bill[Lords] may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Neubert.]

Family Law Reform Bill [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
In recent years, as part of the Government's programme of law reform the Lord Chancellor has tried each year to include at least one important item relating to family law.
The subject of illegitimacy has twice come before the Law Commission for England and Wales and has once come before the Scottish Law Commission. The purpose of the Bill is to enact generally the recommendations of the first report of the English Law Commission, subject to modifications proposed in the second report, deriving from the Scottish line of approach, which has already been enacted.
The importance of the subject may be illustrated by the fact that, in 1985, 126,000 children were born of parents who were not married to one another at the time of their children's birth. Illegitimacy, being a result of sexual intercourse outside marriage, may occur for a number of reasons. They range from indifference as to whether children are brought up within the framework of a marriage, to promiscuity, adultery and rape. None is facilitated or encouraged in the least degree by this Bill, which does nothing to undermine the institution of marriage but which does mitigate the impact upon children of the sins of their fathers—or for that matter their mothers—by eliminating so far as possible the legal disadvantages of illegitimacy.
Under the existing law there is discrimination that directly affects the position of both the illegitimate child and its father. The maintenance of such a child is subject to special restrictions affecting the jurisdiction of magistrates' courts; for instance no lump sum exceeding the relatively paltry figure of £500 may be awarded. An illegitimate child is subject to discrimination in its right to inheritance. It cannot, upon intestacy, inherit from a brother or sister or any other collateral, and though it can inherit from a parent it cannot inherit from any more remote ancestor. It cannot be the heir to an entailed interest. The father of an illegitimate child is also subject to discrimination by law, which may adversely affect the interest and welfare of the child.
Part I of the Bill contains only one clause, but it lays down the fundamental principle on which the Bill is based. Subsection (1) applies both to enactments and to instruments passed or made after the commencement of the Act. It provides that, unless a contrary intention appears, relationships are to be construed without regard to the marital status of the parents at the time of birth. This reflects the Scottish approach.
The policy of clause 1 is applied, by clause 2, only to certain specified past enactments. Clause 3 renders enforceable an agreement between parents relating to parental rights and duties, if, but only if, the court considers that the child will benefit by the agreement. Clause 4 and following clauses give the father of an illegitimate child various rights that he does not, at present, enjoy. It provides that the court may order that he may enjoy—subject to any contrary direction—jointly with the mother, if she is alive, or guardian, all parental rights and duties with respect to the child. The

courts will, of course, have a discretion as to whether to make such an order and such an order will be made only if to do so is in the child's interest. It is envisaged that a typical situation in which such an order might be made would be where the child's parents have been living in a stable relationship which is ended by the mother's death. The effect of an order vesting all the parental rights and duties in the father would effectively be to put the father into the same legal position in relation to the child as he would have been in had he been married to the mother at the relevant time. The need for the ability to make such an order was emphasised in a recent case.
Under this Part of the Bill the father of an illegitimate child is also given certain other rights in relation to that child. He will be able to apply for these rights only if he already has rights to custody, or care and control over, the child in question.
Additionally, whenever it is in the child's interests to do so, the father of an illegitimate child who actually has custody of him is given certain rights as a "parent" under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 and the Child Care Act 1980. It is considered that the creation of these rights strikes the righ balance between the father's parental rights and the duties of the local authority in such a case. They also ensure that a father who, before a child is taken into care, has had responsibility for its upbringing, is put in the same position as its mother.
Part II makes general provision for custody and access orders and for financial provision on behalf of the illegitimate child.
The Guardianship of Minors Act 1971 is amended so that the courts will be able to make custody or access orders in relation to all children, whether or not legitimate, either on the application of either parent, or where a guardian has been appointed to the exclusion of the surviving parent, or where there is a disagreement between joint guardians, one of whom is a parent. When the court makes an order under those provisions it will in all cases apply the principle that the child's welfare is to be the first and paramount consideration.
Let me deal in a little more detail with the financial provision for illegitimate children. The Bill repeals the Affiliation Proceedings Act 1957. That Act is a direct descendant of the old bastardy laws, whose object was to relieve the parish of the burden of child maintenance if it could be placed on the father. The repeal of this Act abolishes the separate and distinct procedure for enforcing financial provision for an illegitimate child by affiliation proceedings. The Bill provides that orders for financial provision for all children, irrespective of their parents' marital status, are to be obtained by proceedings under the Guardianship of Minors Act 1971, as amended.
Accordingly, there will no longer be a time limit of three years after the birth of the child for the bringing of financial proceedings for illegitimate children. Secondly, there will no longer be any special rule of law requiring corroborative evidence that the putative father is the natural father of an illegitimate child. This distinctive requirement, which the Law Commission thought had no place in the civil law, dates back to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, under which the overseers of the poor could recover from the putative father the cost to the parish of supporting the illegitimate child. Thirdly, the child's mother will be able to apply for a financial provision order in respect of an illegitimate child, notwithstanding that she is married to a man other than


the child's father. Finally, the special avenue of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court will no longer be available. Such an appeal has been unique to this area of domestic jurisdiction and has been an accident of history.
Under the Bill the High Court, the county courts and the magistrates' courts will all have jurisdiction to make orders for financial provision for an illegitimate child, as they already have for legitimate children. Magistrates' courts will cease to have exclusive jurisdiction. As with orders for custody and access, the courts will be empowered to make financial provision orders, either on the application of one of the child's parents, or where there is a guardian to the exclusion of the surviving parent, or where there is a disagreement between joint guardians, one of whom is a parent. Additionally, provision is made for applications by children over the age of 18 whose parents are separated and who are undergoing further education or training, or who have special needs, such as some form of physical handicap.
Part III deals with an illegitimate person's entitlement to certain property rights. This area of the law was last reformed by the Family Law Reform Act 1969. It made various changes which to some extent improved the position of an illegitimate person. However, that Act did not remove all the legal disadvantages which affect an illegitimate person in this regard. Part III remedies this deficiency.
The rules of intestacy are amended so that illegitimacy becomes, in general, irrelevant for the purposes of entitlement or intestacy; and this covers not only the succession of the illegitimate child to the property of others but the rights of others to succeed to the estate of an illegitimate person who dies intestate. Various reforms are effected which benefit illegitimate persons in relation to their rights of succession under wills and other dispositions, including entailed interests.
None of these changes affects succession where a person dies intestate before the coming into force of the provisions, or succession under a will made before their coming into force. None of these reforms will alter the descent of titles of honour, or the devolution of property along with such titles.

Mr. Peter Thurnham: Am I right in understanding that adopted children will have all the rights of natural children except that they will not be able to succeed to a peerage?

The Solicitor-General: I shall deal with my hon. Friend's question about adoptive children in more detail later, if he will permit me to do so.
Part IV provides a new remedy by way of a right to seek a declaration by the courts, to those who seek to establish the facts of their own parentage. For example, there may be a question of future entitlement to property which turns on a dispute as to parentage. The best evidence to resolve such a question, such as blood tests, might no longer be available at the time when the property came to be distributed. In such cases a potential claimant might wish to seek a declaration of parentage at the earlier stage when that evidence is still available.
Part V facilitates the recording of paternity on the birth certificate of an illegitimate child, and part VI deals with a number of miscellaneous and supplemental matters. The most significant clause in this Part is clause 27, which deals

with the legal status of a child born as the result of the artificial insemination of a married woman by a donor. When the woman is artificially inseminated with the semen of someone other than her husband, and her husband consents to such insemination, the clause provides that the child is to be treated in law for all purposes as the child of the marriage.

Mr. Thurnham: Will my hon. and learned Friend confirm that that would apply equally to a test tube baby that was born to an anonymous donor, be it a father., a mother or both parents?

The Solicitor-General: As I have said, it applies to the artificial insemination of a married woman by a donor in circumstances in which the husband consents to that insemination with the semen of someone other than her husband.
The policy of clause 27 has been endorsed in the report of the Warnock committee of inquiry into human fertilisation and embryology. The clause was part of the draft Bill that was attached to the Law Commission's first report in 1982, but after the publication of its second report, the Law Commission indicated that it-would have preferred the matter to be dealt with as part of any future comprehensive legislation on the issues discussed in the Warnock report. However the Government considered that the clause should remain in this Bill. They did not think that a Bill that removed, the discrimination against illegitimacy would be just without clarifying the position of the AID child at least to the extent that Warnock approves. If need be, the clause can be amended later in the light of any future legislation. But to delay an agreed policy until full legislation on the Warnock report could not, in our view, be justified.
The Bill is an important law reform measure that will help illegitimate children to have as normal a family life as possible. Because such children may be born in unstable family circumstances, it is of great importance that the law should not inflict any additional disadvantages upon them. The Bill seeks as far as possible to remove the remaining legal disadvantage from which they suffer. I acknowledge with gratitude the work that the Law Commission put into the preparation of the Bill, and I commend it to the House.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: First, I thank the Solicitor-General for his detailed explanation of the Bill's contents and for letting me have sight of the notes on clauses, which have been prepared to help him make his presentation. It is helpful for me, on behalf of the Opposition, to have sight of the enormous amount of detail that is contained in the document. It helps to deal with detailed matters that perhaps we would otherwise have trawled in Committee. I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
The purpose of the Bill is to enact the recommendations of the first report of the English Law Commission, which is LC 118, which was modified into the second report, which is LC 157. The object of the Bill is to remove any avoidable discrimination against, or stigma attaching to, children born out of wedlock. I welcome that principle unreservedly. The policy that lies behind the Bill is that to the greatest possible extent the legal position of a child born to unmarried parents should be the same as that of


a child born to married parents. This will bring the United Kingdom into line with the Council of Europe convention on the legal status of children born out of wedlock and with the European Convention on Human Rights.
This is clearly an important subject. In 1985, there were 126,000 children born to unmarried parents. At present children who are born out of wedlock are discriminated against in a number of ways. For example, in the provision of maintenance, there is special jurisdiction exercised by magistrates. They cannot award a lump sum for maintenance in excess of £500. The law on inheritance provides that a child born out of wedlock cannot inherit on an intestacy from a brother or sister. He or she can inherit from a parent but not from remoter ancestors. Although it is less common, a third example of discrimination is that the father of a child who is born out of wedlock is also subject to discrimination. If he is awarded custody of the child, no maintenance contribution can be ordered from the mother, irrespective of her means. Further, a father's consent is not required for the adoption of such a child or the marriage of such a child who is under the age of 18 years.
Clause 1 applies to instruments passed both before and after the commencement of the Act and provides that in general, unless a contrary intention is evident, relationships are to be construed without regard to the marital status of a person's parents at the time of his or her birth. In clause 4, certain rights are given to the father of a child who is born out of wedlock. The courts are given a discretion to order that the father can enjoy jointly with the mother or guardian of the child all parental rights and duties. Furthermore, there are a number of rights that are given specifically to the father. The father has the right to apply to the courts for directions when the parents disagree on questions of the child's welfare. There is now the right to apply to become the child's guardian on the death of the mother, and the right to appoint a testamentary guardian. As well as this, the father has the right to object to a testamentary guardian appointed by the mother. The father's agreement is now to be a precondition to the child being adopted or to him or her getting married under the age of 18 years.
The Solicitor-General referred rightly to the financial provisions. The Bill abolishes the Affiliation Proceedings Act 1957. This removes the separate procedure which exists for enforcing provisions for children born out of wedlock by affiliation proceedings. The procedure will be that laid down under the Guardianship of Minors Act 1971. In other words, the position will be the same for all children. The High Court and county courts will have jurisdiction to make orders to provide financially for children born out of wedlock.
The Solicitor-General referred also to property rights. The rules of intestacy are to be amended so that illegitimacy becomes irrelevant for most purposes as regards entitlement to property on an intestacy. The hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) will, I assume, be pleased to be able to anticipate good news in later years. The descent or devolution of titles or property which devolves with titles is unaffected by the Bill. I do not know whether that is good news for the hon. Gentleman, but he has expressed an interest.

Mr. Thurnham: It is my understanding that an adopted child is not in a position to succeed to a peerage. That is my reading of the position, and I consider it to be unfortunate.

Mr. Brown: Obviously the hon. Gentleman is not pleased enough. It is my understanding that the Bill makes no change in that direction, so perhaps it does not go as far as the hon. Gentleman would like.
The Bill contains a number of miscellaneous provisions. There will be a new remedy whereby a child born out of wedlock can apply for a declaration from the court to seek to establish the facts of his or her parentage. Paternity can be recorded on the birth certificate of a child born out of wedlock. Where the husband consents to his wife conceiving by artificial insemination, the child is to be treated as a child of the marriage.
All of that is welcome. However, there is a major anomaly that we shall wish to trawl in Committee with an amendment from the Opposition. That deals with the effect of the Bill on anomalies as regards citizenship. The principal defect of the Bill is that it does nothing to remove the anomaly created by the British Nationality Act 1981. The problem was stated clearly by the Law Commission in paragraph 3.22 on page 13 of its report. It states:
A legitimate, legitimated or adopted person can derive British citizenship under the new British nationality Act 1981 from his mother or from his father. An illegitimate person can only derive citizenship from his mother because for the purposes of the Act "father" means only the father of a legitimate or legitimated person.
That issue has received widespread public attention, especially from pressure groups, particularly the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the Commission for Racial Equality. Briefly, the arguments are that the Bill is designed to
remove, as far as possible, the legal disadvantages of illegitimacy so far as they affect the illegitimate child.
By failing to deal with the question of nationality the Bill is subject to a glaring omission. The British Nationality Act 1981 created the problem. The Act ended the conferral of British citizenship by birth. British citizenship is the key to the right of abode, which makes the problem all the more important. By virtue of the 1981 Act children born in the United Kingdom are British by birth only if one parent is British or is settled in the United Kingdom. By section 50(9) of the Act the word "parent" does not include the father of an illegitimate child. Therefore, if his mother is a foreigner the child does not obtain British citizenship. Similarly, fathers of illegitimate children born abroad can confer no rights of citizenship.
When the 1981 Act was in Committee the Government said that they were not dealing with the problem because the Law Commission was reconsidering the position of illegitimate children. That reconsideration brought about the legislation that we are discussing today. However, the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) said :
If an acceptable solution could be found, the matter could be dealt with by legislation based on the Law Commission's reports."—[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 17 February 1981; c. 102.]
The Commission argued strongly for the change. In paragraph 11.9 of its report it said :
we see no reason of principle which would cause us to change the proposal … that non-marital children should be enabled to acquire British citizenship from their fathers on the same terms as does a marital child under the existing law.
However, it did not draft proposals, because it was unable to make definite proposals as regards Scotland.
In another place amendments were sought to rectify the position and the noble Lord Silkin was the principal proponent. The Lord Chancellor stated that he and the Government had no objections to the general principle that a child should be able to acquire citizenship from his father. However, the Lord Chancellor itemised two objections. The first was that the Bill applies only to England and Wales whereas citizenship is a matter for the United Kingdom. He said that that required consultation. Secondly, he said that there could be difficulties in establishing the paternity of children born abroad. I have to say that that looks like time-wasting. There does not appear to be evidence that the issue will be contentious. Further, it is five years since the Law Commission made its proposal. Why has nothing been done since then? What has been done since the matter was raised in the Lords? Where do the Government stand on the issue now? We shall find out in Committee, if not later tonight.
To deprive children born out of wedlock of their right to British nationality is to deprive them of a fundamental human right. To fail to correct that glaring omission in the Bill and to pass the buck between the Home Office and the Lord Chancellor's Department seems to be cruel and contrary to the whole object behind the Bill. If the Government do not deal with the issue now, it is fair to ask, when are they going to get round to it? That is the only major matter that we shall be wishing to pursue in Committee. However, there are three other minor matters that I shall trail now.
The first is the representations that I have received, and I am sure that Conservative Members have received, from the Magistrates Association. It proposes an amendment to the Bill to rectify what it describes as an anomaly as regards illegitimate children. Its case is that section 16(1) of the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates' Courts Act 1978 provides that :
Either party to a marriage may … apply to a magistrates' court for an order under this section.
The section empowers the court to grant injunctions to parties to a marriage to restrain domestic violence. The Magistrates Association argues that it is in the interest of law and order that small children should be protected from violence in the home, whether or not their parents are married. I am sure that no hon. Member will disagree with that.
The association goes on to argue that the children of married parents are afforded this protection by section 16, but it is contrary to the principles of natural justice that children of unmarried parents should be treated differently. While unmarried mothers and their children can obtain injunctive relief from a county court judge under section 1 of the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976, the Magistrates Association argues that county court judges are not as easily accessible and available as magistrates. Therefore, protection should be extended to non-married people and their children by amending the Bill.
As I understand it, the Lord Chancellor argues that the Bill is not an appropriate vehicle for such an amendment because it would be outside the scope of the Bill. While it affects children who are born out of wedlock, it has wider-ranging implications and consultation with child welfare authorities is necessary. I can see that there is some force in this, and I am certainly not pre-judging the issue. Unlike the issue of nationality, I still have an open mind on this subject.
The Law Commission, in its report which led to the 1978 Act, decided only to extend the magistrates' jurisdiction to married persons, and clearly there was some good reason behind that decision. While the change in the law is desirable, the protection from county courts is aleady there and the Bill may not be the right place for such an amendment. There will be an opportunity for us to explore these points again more thoroughly in Committee.
Two other points have been made to mc. The first is the use of the word "minor" rather than "child" in the Guardianship of Minors Act 1971. A detailed commentary on this has been sent to me by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). He was sent it by the Campaign for Justice in Divorce. It is closely printed, if not closely argued, and the substance of the case that it makes is one at which we may be able to look in Committee.
The final argument that is raised on the Bill came inThe Sunday Times on 28 January by a journalist, Maggie Drumond, in an article entitled "The Reality of Being Illegitimate". She argues that the real problem is not the legal stigma of illegitimacy, which the Bill proposes to remove, but the poverty that comes from being in a one-parent family. She argues that unmarried mothers are poor because they have difficulties in earning a decent living.
The thrust of the article, which criticises the Bill, is that it does not give fathers rights but merely the opportunity to apply to courts for rights, and that women will be terrified of men trying to get their hands on the children. Furthermore, the Bill
with its emphasis on men's rights is for the trendy, joint non marital partners with their cohabitation cookbook.
I can see the case that Ms. Drumond is trying to make, in that the points about poverty have some force, and I sympathise with them. However, I cannot see that, by themselves, they make a case against the Bill. The seeks to remove the legal discriminations against children born out of wedlock. That is its narrow purpose, and I support it in that narrow purpose. It does not deal with wider issues, because it was never intended that it should. On its own terms, it is clearly to be welcomed. While there are matters to be explored in Committee, I am sure that the measure will, in principle, command a great deal of support from all sides of the House.

Family Law Reform Bill [Lords]

Dame Jill Knight: I have no doubt that the Bill has been brought here this evening, and dealt with in the other place, with the best of intentions. Indeed, my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General has never introduced a Bill without impeccable intentions. However, I must say that I am worried about some of the Bill's implications.
Last December, a consultation document was presented to Parliament by a number of Cabinet Ministers. My right hon. and learned Friend was not among them, but the Lord Chancellor was. The document is entitled "Legislation on Human Infertility Services and Embryo Research". It concludes:
The Government's intention is to introduce legislation on the issues dealt with in the Warnock Report but it believes that further detailed discussion is advisable before a Bill is brought forward.
Whatever detailed discussion has taken place, it has not yet been concluded. I note in the consultation paper that views are invited up until the end of June this year. It must be at least a month since the Bill sprang to life in another place—long before the June deadline.
The Bill deals in one particular with precisely the matters to which that paragraph refers—with Warnock matters. However, it does not deal with them with the benefit of considered views, for which the paper specifically asks. Clause 27 is about AID, which was one of the principal issues dealt with in the Warnock report. However, instead of waiting for the results of consultations about AID, clause 27 repeats word for word a clause drafted by the Law Commission as far back as 1982.
My right hon. and learned Friend referred to that; but here is the clause, put down in the Bill with no regard to the discussion paper or to what it might throw up, no regard to the careful and detailed considerations in the Warnock report and no appreciation of the need to update a Law Commission document of 1982—with, in fact, no apparent knowledge that the Law Commission has now repudiated its original 1982 wording. The Law Commission is quite clear on that: it has recognised that the clause is now deficient, bearing in mind what has come to light since 1982 in Warnock. In October last, the Law Commission threw cold water on its own wording, saying that it deplored
piecemeal measures which may later have to be reconsidered.
I put it to the House that that is exactly what clause 27 is doing. I feel strongly that the clause is slotted into the Bill in a piecemeal way, and that, if it is passed in its present form, there will have to be changes later.

Mr. Thurnham: Does my hon. Friend accept that more than 1,000 children have been born by the AID process who would become legitimate with the passage of the Bill, and that, if it is felt at a later stage that the House should amend any part of the Bill, that can of course be done?

Dame Jill Knight: My hon. Friend does not seem to understand that AID is not just about illegitimacy. There is more than one aspect to AID; it should not be treated as though there were only one aspect to be considered. Lord Denning said about AID:

The operation is fraught with tremendous consequences for husband and wife—and the child that is to be.
However, clause 27 treats it as of no great account. Under that clause, AID can be practised without any explanation to either party. Even written consent is unnecessary. The wife can simply ask her husband privately if he consents to AID, and if he says he does he is bound to accept the child as his. Indeed, the clause is so lax in its treatment of AID that nobody would be able later to prove that the question had ever been asked. If the husband denied it, nobody could prove it one way or the other. No record is either made or kept.
Let us suppose that a child born as a result of AID were to be handicapped, or diseased. or of a different ethnic origin from the husband. He could very easily repudiate it. The consultation paper says :
Counselling is seen as an essential element in the provision of infertility services. The Government accepts that couples should receive counselling and would be glad to have further views on the development of such services and whether such counselling should be a statutory requirement.
I agree with that recognition of the importance of counselling. The Government agreed at one time about its importance, because they say so in the consultation paper. I wonder what made them change their mind. Who put it to them that none of these matters is of great importance and that they could easily be slipped in piecemeal later on? The consequences are enormous. Proper weight is not given to the matter in the clause as it stands.
As for the birth certificate, the consultation paper says:
It is essential to maintain the integrity and reliability of the birth register as a record of biological fact.
According to the Bill, the birth certificate will be falsified. I recognise that the intention is to do what is best in the interests of the child, but—

Mr. Thurnham: Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

Dame Jill Knight: I hope that my hon. Friend will permit me to make some progress. I do not want to detain the House for long. I shall give way once more, but once more only.

Mr. Thurnham: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. Is she aware that the latest medical research shows that approximately one fifth of the population does not have the genetic father whose name appears on the birth certificate?

Dame Jill Knight: That is totally irrelevant. First, we do not know it for a fact. Secondly, there is a great deal of difference between what happened in the past and legislating for a completely different set of circumstances. And that is what we are doing tonight.
Under these rather loose arrangements, the child will never know the truth. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) may say that other children will never know the truth, either, but that does not mean that children whom we are permitting to be brought into the world should be denied what Warnock clearly stated was their right. A child would never be able to give a true answer about the family's medical history. It would know only half of it.
Warnock, speaking of children born as a result of AID, recommends that
On reaching 18 the child should have access to basic information about the donor's ethnic origin and genetic health. Legislation should be enacted to provide the right of access.


Those are wise words. Probably they followed on the heels of earlier legislation about adoption: that a child should have the right to know about its background and should be able to contact its mother.
The consultation paper regards it as absolutely essential that there should be a registration and recording system for children who are born as a result of AID and that a central record of AID births should be kept.
This carries out exactly the recommendation of Warnock which says:
The clandestine practice of AID could be very harmful.
It says that it should be available only on a properly organised basis. If hon. Members want to look this up, they will find it in chapter 13 of the Warnock report where the licensing arrangements are clearly described :
We recommend that the provision of AID without a licence for that purpose should be an offence.
It could not be much more clearly stated than that. Of course, it is not an offence now. That is one of the reasons why some of us are anxious that legislation on Warnock should be introduced. But it still will not be an offence if this Bill is unamended. The Bill gives, as it were, a blessing to AID without giving the child its rights.
In the Bill AID is given less importance than an anti-tetanus jab. A record has to be made of a child having an anti-tetanus jab. One knows what is in the syringe and where it came from, but at the moment any agency can provide an AID service. It can collect semen from a donor without asking him any questions or keeping any record. It can pay him and then take payment from a woman to be inseminated, without any details of the donor being made known to her. It could be a lucrative business. Dozens of women could be inseminated from the one donor. Wherever there is a way of making money in this wicked world, people will use it.
I dispute the figures given earlier. I understand that it is estimated that about 1,700 children are born every year by AID. There is no record of them; no one will ever know the secret of their birth. Perhaps that will be a good thing, but it would be good for them to know even if others do not.
The implications of clause 27 have not been thought through carefully. The production of a child by this method is far more important than the question of its legitimacy. If I am fortunate enough to be a member of the Standing Committee, I shall seek to amend the Bill.

Mr. Alex Carlile: I have not yet had the good fortune to come out in the top few in the private Members' ballot, but year on year, ever since I have been an hon. Member, I have given an undertaking to concerned groups that were it my good fortune to come high in the ballot I would present a Bill which would remove the stigma of illegitimacy.
The Bill that I would have presented probably would not have been as well drafted as the Bill before us, which has been drafted professionally; it has had the advantage of two Law Commission reports and has also been through the other place before coming to us. I congratulate the Solicitor-General and the Government on taking the initiative this year to bring this Bill before us.
It is an important Bill which will remove one of the major stigmata which still exist in our society and which discriminate against innocent people. I ask the hon.
Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight), who has raised a serious and important issue, to bear in mind that what the Bill, including clause 27, is concerned with is not the niceties of medical ethics, nor the rules as how AID should be controlled, although they are important, but about what happens to the people who emerge after AID has taken place, people who never asked to be born but who find themselves in the world with an unpleasant and unhelpful stigma attached to them but for the Bill. It is right that the stigma should be removed in this way.
I seek to draw two anomalies to the attention of the Solicitor-General. One has been mentioned in detail by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown). I do not think that repetition would improve the point. That point refers to the anomaly of children who are the illegitimate children of a British father and a non-British mother, yet who cannot acquire British citizenship. That is a very important, unfair anomaly which ought to be rectified and can be rectified in Committee.
The second anomaly I want to draw to the Solicitor-General's attention relates to Scotland. The place where one is born is often a matter of chance. A mother may be on holiday in Scotland on the day when her child is born prematurely. No doubt the waters of the braes can sometimes encourage an early and successful birth. Someone may live in Langholm where hospital facilities are available at Dumfries in Scotland and at Carlisle in England. If a child is born as a result of artificial insemination by a donor with the consent of the father, according to the Bill if the birth takes place in Dumfries or even one mile to the north of the Anglo-Scottish border, the child will be deprived of the advantage of clause 27. If, on the other hand, the child is born in Carlisle or even one mile south of the border, the child will gain the advantage of clause 27. The English-horn child will be regarded as legitimate and will have all the advantages, which I applaud and support, which arise from that clause.
My hon. Friends and I have received numerous representations from Scotland and particularly well argued representations from the Law Society of Scotland. It stressed what could sometimes happen when a child is born rather suddenly. On such occasions, a child may be born in an ambulance. What will the Government do when the child is born as the ambulance is crossing the Anglo-Scottish border? Artificial insemination in England and artificial insemination in Scotland are artificial insemination of the same nature. Birth in England and birth in Scotland should be birth of an equal standard. Those who are concerned with family law in Scotland can see absolutely no reason why clause 27 should not be extended to Scotland.
I invite the Solicitor-General to consider that point very carefully. It seems that although some arguments have been put forward by his hon. Friend the Minister responsible for industry and home affairs, no doubt concentrating on home affairs rather than industry, none of those arguments is convincing against the proposition that for everyone born in any part of the United Kingdom there should be a united standard for birth and legitimacy.

Mr. Roger Sims: As my right and learned Friend the Solicitor-General has explained, the effect of the Bill is to remove many of the distinctions that exist between legitimate and illegitimate children—or, to use


the alternative phrase produced by the Law Commission which it subsequently decided to drop, "marital and non-marital" children.
It has been argued, especially by the Lord Bishop of London, that the effect of the Bill appears to undermine the status of marriage and the family. I can understand that view. I was critical of legislation passed by the House which reduced to one year that period after which divorce was possible. If that did not positively encourage entering into marriage lightly by making the break so easy, at least Parliament appeared to be saying that the bond of matrimony was not as serious or as important as most of us had believed it to be. The criticism that I made at that time was justified, because we were dealing with people who chose to get married or chose to get divorced. In this instance we are talking about the status of children who, as the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) said, have not even asked to be born, and who find themselves either legitimate or illegitimate.
It has been well argued that there is no such thing as an illegitimate child, that there are only illegitimate parents. Therefore, it is right to make what are mainly modest changes and to remove some of the disadvantages suffered by children born out of wedlock. Despite the arguments that have put forward, I do not think that doing that undermines the instutition of marriage. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General will make that point abundantly clear.
One of the surprising omissions from the Bill, has already been mentioned by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown). It is the matter of nationality and I do not need to cover again the ground covered by the hon. Gentleman. The Lord Chancellor said in the other place that there were other complications in this matter, that it was too complex and would need a United Kingdom Bill that would have to be preceded by a good deal of consultation. Surely it is not too difficult to include nationality in the Bill. I shall return to that point.
I am especially concerned, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) about clause 27. There are two grounds for objection to that clause. It allows for the husband of a woman who is the beneficiary of artificial insemination by donor to be registered as the father of the child. Surely that cannot be right. It is legalising a lie. The husband cannot be the father. That is the whole reason why the couple have gone in for AID, yet the husband is being recorded on a legal document as being the father.
If it is not a contradiction in terms, this surely creates a legal fiction. These are not my words, because for them we have the authority of none other than Lord Denning. Without repeating his arguments, I invite hon. Members to read his effective speeches in the other place on this topic. I was surprised that my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor got very cross about this issue and allowed himself to be party to what is, in effect, legalising a deception. I hope that in Committee we can persuade my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General that that is the case and that this clause is inappropriate on those grounds.
My second ground for objection to clause 27 is that about which my hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston spoke. To use shorthand, it seems to be anticipating

Warnock, or rather the legislation that we expect in the fullness of time to stem from the Warnock report and the consultation document. My hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston touched on only a few of the complex issues that surround this whole matter. It raises a lot of moral, religious and legal issues.
I am more sympathetic to the general thrust of Warnock than, perhaps, are my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General and some of my hon. Friends. However, the Government were absolutely right to say that this issue should be dealt with as a whole. We are dealing not only with this issue, but with many others, such as experiments on foetuses. There are many aspects with regard to this matter, yet, here one part of Warnock is being plucked out and popped into the Bill. As I mentioned a moment ago, the Lord Chancellor argued that nationality was too complex an issue to be included in the Bill. Yet here a tiny bit of AID—which is just as complex as nationality—is being included in the Bill.
Clause 27 refers only to AID. What about the donation of an egg or embryo? That apparently is not covered. Clause 27 is at best premature and is inappropriate to the Bill. That is not only my view. My hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston has quoted from part of the consultation document, and I shall quote from another :
The Government would find it helpful to have further views, therefore, on the way in which a system of registering and recording children born as a result of AID or egg or embryo donation might be set up which would:(a) best meet the child's need for access to the truth about his genetic origins and some information about his genetic father;(b) satisfy the family's need for privacy;(c) take account of the donor's wish for anonymity.
The Government are saying that they would find it helpful to have further views, but they are apparently ploughing ahead with this legislation.
In its second report, after referring to the development of techniques, the Law Commission says :
It may therefore be desirable to have a comprehensive scheme dealing with all these techniques, which raise similar difficulties in defining parenthood and have implications beyond family law. To avoid piecemeal measures which may later have to be reconsidered, we can see some advantage in deferring legislation on this subject until a comprehensive scheme can be achieved.
To which I add, hear, hear.
I shall refer briefly to two issues, one of which is included in the Bill and one which is excluded. Schedule 4 repeals subsections (10) and (13) of section 20 of the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates' Courts Act 1978, and thus precludes a young person from applying to a magistrates' court to revive a maintenance order. I do not understand why that should be. Perhaps it is a matter that we can pursue in Committee.
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery referred to representations by the Magistrates Association and the Justices Clerks Society. They believe that the opportunity should be taken to extend the powers of the courts to make orders protecting from violence, or the threat of violence, co-habitees and illegitimate children, a power which at present is limited to parties to a marriage and their children. The Lord Chancellor's Department has resisted their pleas. I hope that in Committee we can persuade my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General Friend that such a move should take place and that the Bill is an appropriate vehicle for the change.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: I am profoundly unhappy about the Bill. It is curious that the Government, and indeed almost all Governments, stand aside from what most people regard as moral questions, such as abortion and obscenity, and relegate them to the initiatives of private Members. The social trends in society, which often are even more morally significant, are reserved for Government legislation. Thereby, the permissive society, which most of us deplore, has been advanced in the Government's own legislation with regard to matrimony and divorce law. Parliament seems quite unwilling or unable to arrest and even sometimes seems to encourage the moral decline which is in evidence in violent crime, lawlessness, sexual abuse and cruelty to children.
The Bill's objective is to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from children born outside wedlock. First, last and always that is a good objective which I shall always support. However, will the Bill remove the stigma? Whatever we do about changing the law on the legal status of such children, we cannot remove the social stigma which has no basis in law. I sympathise with the lady who said that the stigma is created by the poverty of the one-parent family.
Why do we have to do this laudable thing in a way which weakens the institution of marriage? I have no doubt that the Bill will lead to a decline in the number of marriages, and to a weakening of the institution of marriage generally and of the conventional family. Children should he born with the maximum chance of happiness within marriage.
It will be argued that it is no longer necessary to be married. Many people marry—they say—for the sake of the children. The Bill's objective is to make it unnecessary to marry for the sake of the children, because it lifts the moral stigma. but the Bill probably will not do that.
Unfortunately it is now all too common, even in public life, for people to live together, to have children but not to be married. We are told that 126,000 illegitimate children were born in 1985. I understand that 53,000 of them were born as the result of an unstable relationship, not to a man and woman living together as husband and wife in a loving relationship. In some cases the identity of the father is not known. That is one of the obstacles to granting British citizenship to the children of British citizens wo have had an illegitimate relationship. There is no right to British citizenship when the father is unknown. The 53,000 births resulting from unstable relationships is far too many and I believe that the number is rising.
The Bill's worst provision is contained in clause 27, with which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) dealt so well. I adopt everything that she said about it. I emphasise the total rejection of the idea that one can legislate to make true a falsehood. It is an example of the end justifying the means. It was done in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 under which we made it a criminal offence to tell the truth about a man's past, even though that truth was far more preferable to the legal fiction for which it was substituted. Here we have a proposal that a person who is not the father shall be declared to be the father for all legal purposes. Can that possibly be justified? Clause 27 is not justified for the reasons that have been adduced not only

by my hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston but by my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims). I strongly support them in their rejection of that clause.
I hope that all those criticisms that have been made by my hon. Friends will be seriously considered before the Bill is allowed to become law.

Mr. Peter Thurnham: I should like to congratulate the Government on introducing the Bill. Some people may believe that it could have been brought in as a private Member's Bill. It is an excellent tribute to the Government that they have introduced the Bill. It is also a remarkable tribute to my right hon. arid learned Friend the Lord Chancellor who, in his 80th year, has brought forward a Bill containing not only all the measures recommended by the Law Reform Committee, but also clause 27. Although I have grave reservations about this clause, I believe that it is a remarkable tribute to the Lord Chancellor that he has grasped this nettle and attempted to tackle this difficult problem.
I was pleased that in the other place the Lord Chancellor said:
To delay an agreed policy until full legislation on the Warnock Report could not, at any rate in my view, be justified.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 November 1986; Vol. 482, c. 652.]
I fully endorse that approach.
I wish to speak to three issues that I have touched upon in interventions. First, I believe that it would be remiss of the House to pass legislation that prevented an adopted child from succeeding to a title when, in every other respect, the adopted child would be treated as a natural child. I believe that that measure had an easier passage in the other place than it deserves here.
I hope that test-tube children born as a result of a donor either father, mother, or even both—are treated in the same way as AID children are treated in clause 27. Dame Mary Warnock said in a letter to me that
it would be totally illogical not to".
The numbers involved are small, but I recognise the force of the Lord Chancellor's comments when he wrote to me to say that he feared that my suggestion
is precisely the straw which would break my camel's back this year
because of the need to get legislation through the House. I hope that in the urgency to progress legislation we will not sacrifice test-tube children on the altar of electoral expediency.
The main thrust of my remarks relates to clause 27 and how we regard the fathers of AID children. At present, the register of births stands, on the face of it, as the true genetic record. It is an act of perjury deliberately to give false information on registration. In clause 27 of the Bill the Lord Chancellor is suggesting that we give legal sanction to biologically untrue facts. Some hon. Members have said that it is giving legal sanction to lies. However, the Lord Chancellor is acknowledging the farce of the registration of births as it now stands.
As I mentioned to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight), there are some new blood tests available, working on the genetic DNA test, that can establish beyond all reasonable doubt to factors of one in a trillion the true parentage. It is known as genetic fingerprinting. I do not believe that it is widely known that such genetic tests have shown that, in this country and in the United States, approximately one fifth


of the population appear to have a false father written on the birth certificate based on biological terms. Therefore, at present, one fifth of the population are under a delusion as to who their fathers are.
The evidence that I have——

Dame Jill Knight: I have been following my hon. Friend's remarks closely. How will that be known unless every child has a blood test for that purpose?

Mr. Thurnham: It is done only on a sample basis; but on that basis it has been established in tests in the United Kingdom and America that about one fifth of the population do not have their true fathers' names on their birth certificates. The interesting fact is that, apparently, the higher up the social scale, the worse the percentage is. That leads one to wonder whether some of their Lordships, who laid such stress on truth during their debate on the Bill, should have been in that House in the first place. Perhaps their arguments were a little confused on that point.
I mentioned the problem to the Lord Chancellor, who said that it would have constituted an even greater problem in Edwardian days. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) should bear that in mind when he considers the moral decline of today.
Birth registration is needed for two distinct reasons. One is to provide a true genetic record, and the other is to secure the legal position of the child. Understandably, if there is any potential difficulty, the legal position is bound to be uppermost in a mother's mind when registering the birth of her child. As the birth register is accessible to the public, the mother does not want to burden her child with a cruel social stigma if it is socially more acceptable to put down the name of the man who is to be the child's legal parent—usually, the husband.
The true identity of the father must always be regarded as an essentially private matter, and I should be much opposed to any attempt to require public disclosure of such information. As drafted, clause 27 sanctions an existing fact—that the register of births is not a true genetic record. However, if such a sanction is to be given, it should be given consciously, with full awareness of its implications, and provision must be made for its results.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor talked of our manifest duty under the Bill. Our duty must be to the children. Paragraph 30 of the Government's consultation paper—as my hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston has just said—considers it essential to maintain the integrity and reliability of the birth register as a record of biological fact, and to ensure the child's right of access as an adult to an accurate record of the biological facts of his birth. That is an important part of an adopted child's search for his identity.
I suggest that clause 27 should be amended so as honestly and truthfully to provide for the legal status of donor children. I urge the Lord Chancellor not to admit implicitly that the register of births is a bundle of falsehoods but to establish a modern, accurate and workable registration system. It is not good enough to say that we must wait until the Warnock report has been implemented. The British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering have advocated that the ideal solution, if time allowed and resources were immediately available, would be to legislate now for the legal status of AID and ovum

donation children, and, simultaneously, to provide a system of registration of births that would allow privacy to the families concerned without departing from the principle of a biologically accurate record of births.
In the absence of a statutory licensing authority of the type envisaged by Warnock, the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering felt that it would not yet be possible to devise a satisfactory amendment to clause 27 and that, to use a child care term, the least detrimental alternative would now appear to be to omit clause 27 altogether, and to press for speedy legislation on all the Warnock proposals, with some prospect of retrospective legislation in the case of the legal status of the children concerned.
I suggest that we already have what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister described as an excellent voluntary licensing authority, which is now in its third year of operation and which could provide the basis for a satisfactory system of registration of donor births. There should be two registers: a publicly accessible register of legal parentage, and a separate confidential register of biological parentage which would be kept securely, with access given only to children who had reached the age of 18.
It is right and proper for us to use this opportunity to grasp the nettle. I support the aims of clause 27. I would not like it to be deleted; I would like it to be taken a stage further so that we have a register of legal parentage and another of biological parentage, which could be accessed by the individual concerned at the age of 18.

The Solicitor-General: Notwithstanding the hour, which is a good deal later than the clock usually shows when that expression is employed in another place, we have had an excellent and highly informed debate which I am sure presages a high quality, although I hope not protracted, Committee stage.
I am grateful for the welcome that has been accorded to the Bill by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown), my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). There is general understanding of the injustice of the stigma which attaches to the innocent product of an extra-marital union.
I know that that view is shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), who said that he would always stand for the removal of that unjust slur. He described it as a social slur. I am not sure to what extent social disadvantage exists today, but it is common ground that legal disadvantages should be removed whenever practicable.
The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East criticised the Bill, not for what it does but for omitting to make any provision for the acquisition of citizenship by a person who is currently regarded as illegitimate in law. It is important to remember that the Bill is designed to give effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission. We have to deal with one thing at a time.
If my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor had tried to add to the Bill, provisions attaching to nationality, he would have had far less chance, by reason of its increased scope, of securing a place in the legislative programme.
I acknowledge with gratitude what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East said in praise of the Lord


Chancellor for having succeeded in bringing the Bill before Parliament. There would have been less chance of success if the Bill's scope had been enlarged in a way which would have led to it avoiding the criticism that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery levelled against it.
The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East raised two relatively minor matters which, no doubt, we shall explore in Committee, and mentioned a third to say, with his customary fairness, that he does not agree with it. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) spoke with feeling about clause 27. She was critical of the inclusion of the clause. I have no doubt that we shall have interesting and important discussions on this issue in Committee. It must be remembered, however, that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor was bringing in a measure as comprehensive in its scope as it was practical in his view to introduce. To deal with the injustices that now afflict those who are regarded in law as illegitimately born would have produced a glaring omission if it were decided to leave out the aspect of the Warnock report that bore upon the legal consequences of AID. We are not talking about the difficult issues that surround the circumstances in which AID should be permitted, and, if permitted, regulated, and the Bill will not affect them. Many complex issues are involved upon which diverse and opposing views are held, and it is right that they should continue to be the subject of consultation.
We are concerned with the consequence in law of a human being who is the product of such insemination.Such a person, if the law remains unchanged, is regarded as illegitimate. I acknowledge the difficulty and complexity of the issues about which my hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston is rightly concerned—AID and the thrust of the Warnock committee's report—but I do not believe that her strictures on the inclusion of clause 27 were wholly justified. I note the recommendation of the Warnock committee's report—I shall quote from the summary—
which states:
The AID child should in law be treated as the legitimate child of its mother and her husband, where they have both consented to the treatment.
The Bill provides as it does only where there is consent. As for whether consent might be contested and withdrawn, for example, it is important to note in clause 27 that there is a presumption that
unless it is proved to the satisfaction of any court by which the matter has to be determined that the other party to that marriage did not consent to the insemination, the child shall be treated in law".
My hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston makes an important point in law on the proof of insemination, and one to which I am sure that we shall be giving attention later.

Dame Jill Knight: I am grateful for what my right hon. and learned Friend has said, but if it is an argument for leaving clause 27 as it is and for saying that all the complications of dealing with AID can be dealt with

outside the Bill, why not include all the children that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) is concerned about? If we are including AID, why not IVF and surrogacy, for example? What is good for one group of the infertility parent syndrome is surely good for all.

The Solicitor-General: The answer to my hon. Friend's question is that the recommendation to which I have referred relates to the AID child. I do not doubt that there were good reasons why the Law Commission did not extend the recommendation more widely, and I think that we should concentrate on the recommendations of the Law Commission. I have no doubt that the issue will be raised again, but I doubt whether my hon. Friend would wish to see the clause have a wider ambit. I think that the underlying reasons are sufficient for the drafting of the clause as it stands, and I hope that the House will agree to that.
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery raised some interesting points about jurisdiction, and not the only ones that can be raised by reason of the separate legal system that is enjoyed, if that is the word, in Scotland. I am grateful for the welcome chat he gave the Bill.
I was particularly grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) said firmly that in his view the Bill did not undermine the institution of marriage. I spoke about that in my opening remarks and do not wish to repeat that except to say that I am sure that my hon. Friend is right and that I have the misfortune in this regard to disagree with his close neighbour my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington who took the view that it would. I do not believe that the provisions of the Bill are significantly going to reduce the number of marriages that are contracted. However, I share his great concern that we should not, in this legislature, do anything to accelerate any moral decline that may be taking place in this country.
I hope that I have dealt with all the interesting points that have arisen except for two questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East. He asked about adopted children. Adopted children are treated as natural children for all purposes except in cases of succession to titles. That is the provision of the Children Act 1975. He also asked a question in connection with clause 27. That clause applies only where sperm was inseminated into the mother and it does not apply 10 embryo donation where fertilisation of the egg takes place in vitro.
I am sorry to have delayed the House, although I hope not unnecessarily, during my concluding speech at the end of a short Second Reading debate. I am grateful for the points that have been made and I hope that the House will see fit to accept my warm recommendation that the Bill be given a Second Reading.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).

Minors' Contracts Bill [Lords]

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered. Order for Third Reading read.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This short Bill has received consideration in both Houses. It gives effect to the Law Commission's report on minors' contracts. Its purpose is to amend and modernise three aspects of the law on this topic which seemed to the commission to be in need of reform. The Bill accordingly repeals two obsolete and confusing 19th century statutes; reverses the common law rule that a guarantee is unenforceable against the guarantor if the principal obligation in unenforceable on grounds of minority, and gives the courts greater power to make restitution of property acquired by a minor under an unenforceable contract.
It is enough to say that it has been generally welcomed as a useful measure of law reform which would make the law in this area more simple and more just. I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: The Bill is to be welcomed. The aim of the Law Commission—it is the work of the Law Commission that has brought the Bill into being—was to uphold and balance two fundamental principles in this area of the law. It sought to protect the minor against his own inexperience and the exploitation of unscrupulous adults and, at the same time, to avoid causing unnecessary hardship to adults who deal fairly with minors.
Those two principles have been carried through into the Bill admirably and I particularly admire the continued application of the principle of qualified unenforceability. I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for the note and for the exploration we had in Committee of the points contained in clause 3. I am happy to see the Bill come into law.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

Recognition of Trusts Bill [Lords]

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered. Order for Third Reading read.—[Queen's Consent and Prince of Wales's Consent signified.]

The Solicitor-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This short Bill incorporates into United Kingdom law the main provisions of the convention on the law applicable to trusts and on their recognition, which was adopted in draft by the Hague conference on private

internatonal law on 20 October 1984 and which was signed on behalf of the United Kingdom on 10 January 1986. This Bill will enable the United Kingdom to ratify the convention and, by so doing, will assist the position of United Kingdom trusts with interests overseas.
The Bill has been welcomed as a valuable measure of law reform which will serve to clarify and develop the existing law of trusts. I commend it to the House.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: This Bill is also to be welcomed. As the Solicitor-General said, it is designed to implement the Hague convention, instigated by the United Kingdom relating to the law applicable to trusts and their recognition.
The Bill has a dual purpose. It enables the United Kingdom to ratify the convention, and it brings into force in the United Kingdom the main provisions of the convention. I am sure that it is right that we do that.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

Reverter of Sites Bill [Lords]

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered. Order for Third Reading read—[Queen's Consent and Prince of Wales's Consent signified.]

The Solicitor-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill is short and technical but valuable. It deals with statutes that enable land owners to donate land to be used for schools, churches and other charitable purposes, and contains provisions whereby the land will revert automatically to the owner or his successors once it is no longer used for relevant purpose. Problems have arisen both in tracing the person entitled to the land on reverter and in enabling the land to be put to proper use if the owner cannot be traced.
The Bill solves these problems by giving to those persons holding the land at the time of reverter full power to manage the land and sell it with a good title. If the true owner cannot be traced, the Bill enables the sale proceeds to be returned to charitable use.
This Bill has been widely welcomed as a useful measure of reform. I commend it to the House.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: The Bill has been widely welcomed. We were able to explore a number of small, technical details in Committee, perfectly satisfactorily. The Bill arises from the work of the Law Commission, and it is right to record our gratitude and thanks to it for the work that it does.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

Education Maintenance Allowances

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Malone.]

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I am grateful for the opportunity, even at this late hour, to raise the question of education maintenance allowance and social security disregards. Before I go into detail about the subject, I should put it into context. We are concerned with those grants that are paid to young people aged 16 to 18. The basic problem that concerns me is that far too few young people remain in education. This is particularly unfortunate when one makes comparisons with our competing countries. About 32 per cent. of our young people remain in full-time education, whereas in the United States it is 79 per cent., in the Netherlands 70 per cent., in Japan 69 per cent., in Italy 48 per cent., in Germany 44 per cent. and in France 58 per cent.
I realise that the figures look a little better if one includes those taking part-time education between the ages of 16 and 18, when the figures go up to 64 per cent., but we are still way behind countries such as Denmark, Belgium, the United States, the Netherlands, Japan and Germany with 84 per cent.
We have to consider why we do not do far better at persuading young people to remain in education. When we start to look at one or two of the more detailed figures, we can see that there is a considerable waste of resources of young people who would benefit from either full-time or part-time education, but do not do so. A letter sent to me by a physics teacher illustrates the problem. He says that he is proud of the fact that, having been appointed to the school, he has been building up physics as a popular subject.
This year I have 15 pupils likely to get good O levels, five of them girls, and out of that group I hope that eight boys and two girls will stay on at school to take A level physics.
He goes on to ask me to imagine his horror when one of the girls announced that as soon as she had completed her O-level exams she intended to leave. He investigated the matter to see why, with her obvious ability, she wanted to leave. He discovered that, like many others in Britain today, she was the only person in the household earning any money.
She has two younger brothers, and both her parents have been out of work for over three years. She has a part-time job working in a shoe shop on Thursdays and Fridays after school and all day Saturdays.
It seems that the shopkeeper had offered the girl a full-time job selling shoes as soon as she could leave school. The physics teacher is horrified that she should be pushed, because of financial hardship, into leaving school, rather than staying on with, he believes, a good chance of getting A-levels, including a good A-level in physics, and going on to university.
If hon. Members think I am quoting just one example, I assure them that when we look into what is happening in local education authorities throughout the country we see that a substantial number of youngsters with five or more O-levels do not remain in education. In Tameside, part of the area I represent, 23 per cent. of youngsters who get five or more O-levels do not remain in full-time education. In Trafford, it is 20 per cent., in Rotherham 22 per cent., in Dudley 20 per cent. and in Sutherland 19 per

cent. In the country as a whole, 13 per cent. of youngsters with five or more O-levels do not remain in full-time education.
The figure is somewhat better in inner London, with only 9 per cent. of those with five or more O-levels leaving. In the city of Manchester it is 11 per cent. I mention those two as being better because those authorities pay education maintenance allowances. They do not pay particularly large allowances, mainly because of the way in which the allowances link up with the social security system.
Since I entered the House I have argued strongly for the introduction of education maintenance allowances as the most effective way of persuading youngsters who would benefit from continuing their education to remain. Up to 1974 I taught in a variety of secondary schools and I was always aware that some very able pupils did not remain in education because of financial pressures.
I took part in deputations to various Ministers at the Department of Education and Science between 1974 and 1979 to press for the introduction of education maintenance allowances. It is with regret that I say that the last Labour Government did not bring in a national scheme.
But while we discussed in Parliament whether a national scheme should or could be introduced, authorities such as Manchester and ILEA set up their own local schemes. The trouble was that the amount that they could pay was fixed by the inter-relationship of those sums with the social security regulations. I understand that in 1978, the amount of education maintenance allowance that could be paid before it reduced the supplementary benefit that a family received was £7·50 if a child was staying on into the sixth form and £9·50 if the child was continuing its education in an FE college.
I think the difference was designed to allow for the fact that if pupils remained in school they were in most instances entitled to free school meals, whereas if they went into FE colleges there was no provision for free school meals. There might also have been a slight difference in the amount of help available for transport to and from school. However, since 1978 no attempt has been made to uprate those allowances. The education maintenance allowance has, in practice, steadily lost its value. None of the local authorities is prepared to pay out more than the £7·50 and the £9·50, because the family would not benefit from it; it would simply be clawed back by the Department of Health and Social Security.
If those figures had been uprated in line with inflation between 1978 and now, the rate in schools would be £14·70 and the rate in FE would be £18·60. There has thus been a substantial deterioration in the assistance that can be given to young people. In 1978, if a young person left school and got a job, he would obviously be much better off; if he did not get a job, the difference between the education maintenance allowance and the social security that he would draw in his own right was fairly small. Now, the difference between the £7·50 and the £9·50 and what a young person can draw on a youth training scheme—£27 in the first year and £35 in the second—is much larger.
The Government should consider uprating the disregards. However, the position is slightly more complicated, because in 1988 a new system of social security uprating will be introduced. Why cannot the Minister uprate the social security disregards now to


£14·70 and £18·60, so that at least local authorities could uprate their education maintenance allowances so that they are worth in real terms the same as in 1978? If the new social security regulations are brought into effect, what will happen to education maintenance allowances?
I understand from the new housing benefit regulations, which are now in the Library, that education maintenance allowances will be disregarded in relation to those benefits from 1 April 1988. I hope that the Minister will confirm that it is intended that the social security regulations will be the same as the housing benefit regulations. It appears that, 12 months from now, there will be no limit on the level of education maintenance allowances that a local authority will be able to pay, because the entire allowance will be disregarded—as, I understand, will part-time earnings for a young person who has a paper round or works in a shop at weekends.
If I am right, and the Goverment intend to disregard entirely an income from education maintenance allowances, it seems very sad that for 12 months young people will not be able to obtain an uprated education allowance, although from April 1988—assuming that the new legislation comes into force—they will receive a total disregard. I press the Minister at least to uprate the £7·50 and the £9·50 first introduced in 1978 to £14·70 and £18·60, as a first step. I hope that he will also take the trouble to make it clear to education authorities that, as from next April, no limit will be placed on what they can pay in education maintenance allowances, and that, during next year, some of them can take into account the change in the regulations and will be able to put forward proposals for a substantial increase in education maintenance allowances.
I should like further progress to be made and a national scheme of education maintenance allowances to be introduced in the next 12 months. They would substantially address the problem that far too few young people remain in full-time education at 16 or over. There is increasing evidence that some of those who would benefit from full-time education are being lured into youth training schemes that are of less benefit to them and to the community as a whole. I await with interest the Minister's reply.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Nicholas Lyell): The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) has a long-standing interest in education that is very well known to the House. Through his chairmanship of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments he will also be as aware as any hon. Member of the social security regulations that are laid before the House. It is therefore a particular pleasure that in responding tonight to his comments I am able to combine the two strands.
The hon. Gentleman began by quoting some international statistics. They are very much a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not expect me, as a DHSS Minister, to follow him too far down that route. However, I know enough about European comparisons to realise that they can be very misleading. I think that what I have to say later will be

welcome to the hon. Gentleman. But before I come to our plans for the future I should like to say a few words about the present arrangements and their background.
As the hon. Gentleman has explained, local education authorities have the power to award grants to young people who choose to remain at school or in further non-advanced education beyond the age limit for compulsory schooling. These are known as education maintenance allowances in England and Wales. In Scotland they are bursaries. Their broad purpose is to enable pupils to continue their education without causing hardship to themselves or their parents. They are related to parental income. The powers to make such allowances are discretionary. It is for each authority to decide whether and how to exercise their powers. If they decide to make an award, in England and Wales it is equally open to the local authority to decide the amount paid. In Scotland, as in many areas of our law, the arrangement is slightly different. Where the authority has decided to make an award to someone in full-time education there are fixed rates, depending on the age of the young person and whether they are at home or elsewhere.
The policy on use of the powers in the education legislation and decisions on individual cases are therefore very much a matter for the local education authority. Equally, the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that ministerial responsibility for the education legislation rests with my colleagues in the Department of Education and Science. I know he will understand why I shall therefore concentrate in the remainder of my remarks on the implications of education maintenance allowances for the social security system.
The first point I wish to make is that the question of education maintenance allowances is just one small element in consideration of the overall support that is available in the income-related social security benefits for those with children continuing at school beyond the compulsory school leaving age.
People on supplementary benefit with children staying on at school receive an amount for the living expenses of the young person. This is currently £18·75 for someone aged 16 or 17. The amount is the same as an unemployed young person of the same age living in his parents' household would get. So the same direct financial support is available to the low income family overall, whether or not the child remains at school. The value of these scale rates has increased by some 6 per cent. since we took office. Such families can also receive help with their rent and rates—automatically if the parent is on supplementary benefit. For other people on low incomes, including those in work, the system of needs allowances, which determine how much housing help is paid, takes account of the fact that the claimant is supporting a young person continuing at school. Finally, family income supplement is also available to people on low income in work, with children. Again how the amount paid is worked out would take account of the fact that the young person was continuing at school. There is, therefore, an extensive system of direct financial help to low income families which takes account of the needs of the young person continuing at school after 16.
It has been a longstanding principle of the social security system that there should not be double provision from public funds for the living expenses of its claimants and other members of their families. That is why benefits such as child benefit are taken into account. There are also


problems of equity if people assessed as having the same level of needs can in practice have fairly different levels of income depending on whether some have other forms of income and what the source of that income is.
If that were taken to its logical conclusion there would be no disregards of other income. Successive Government have, however, recognised that there are good reasons for limited disregards in particular circumstances. As a result education maintenance allowances have received special treatment. The present position is that, for children at school, we ignore the first £7·50 per week when calculating the family's benefit entitlement. For young people in other further non-advanced education it is £9·50 per week; the difference relates to the fact that people at school can as the hon. Gentleman surmised get free school meals during term time. The case for this special disregard has broadly been to cover extra needs connected with education, as the supplementary benefits scale rates themselves already cover normal living expenses.
It is true that there have been no increases in these disregards since they were set in 1978. But that is not unique to this particular form of income. For example, the general disregard of part-time earnings for most claimants has remained at the same level for some years. No Government have made a practice of automatic or regular uprating of disregards. This to some extent reflects the difficult issues of principle in allowing disregards within income-related schemes. Generally, I think it fair to say that Governments have given greater priority to the level of support available to all claimants in similar circumstances, rather than specific concessions which can benefit only a minority of them.
We have, however, taken a fresh look at the question of the treatment of education maintenance allowances in the context of our wider social security reforms. One of the main objectives of our proposals——and one that has been widely welcomed—is to put the rules for the income-related benefits on as common a basis as possible. We have, therefore, reviewed carefully the way in which claimants' resources are treated in the three present schemes to see how they can best be brought together.
At present there are different rules in housing benefit and family income supplement from those in the supplementary benefit scheme. In housing benefit and FIS now no account is taken of education maintenance allowances received by the parents.
For the future, we have concluded that no account will be taken of education maintenance allowances and their Scottish equivalents in any of the three reformed income-related benefits—supplementary benefit, housing benefit, and family credit. This will apply from April 1988 when the wider changes take place. This will give local education authorities a further, useful, measure of flexibility in deciding how they use the powers under the education legislation where they wish to help encourage young people in families of modest incomes to stay at school.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I am sure that everyone outside who reads this report of our proceedings will welcome the

flexibility that is being offered to local authorities to put up the education maintenance allowance. But would it not be logical to increase the disregards as from next September so that local authorities could pay education maintenance allowances effectively at a higher rate for the whole of next year rather than being able to start paying the higher rate only from 1 April?

Mr. Lyell: I understand what the hon. Gentleman says. I am glad that he welcomes this significant improvement as from April 1988. He argued persuasively, though not persuasively enough for the Labour Government to make significant improvements. I do not think logic assists him. I think that we are doing the logical thing, which is to make the change at the time when we are making substantial changes, improvements and simplifications in the social security system as from April 1988.
Returning to the point as to the increased flexibility which this will give local authorities, I would expect them to take account of the fact that direct financial help may also be available from the social security system in relevant cases. I am sure they would wish to avoid creating, through their actions, their own inequities in the position of young people in families with similar incomes staying on at school.
I must also make the point that we have been able to take this step in the context of the present education maintenance allowance system designed to provide a further encouragement of education opportunities arid thus directed primarily at education needs. The circumstances would have been rather different if the education maintenance allowance system had been a significant alternative system for meeting the living needs of young people. If that had been the case, I think we could not have offered the improvement in the rules that we are now proposing. Equally if the education maintenance allowance system were ever to develop in such a way that it became, in effect, a routine and overlapping form of support for living expenses, we would have to look again at the question of its treatment in the social security system.
I am, however, very pleased to say that we have been able to plan this worthwhile improvement in the rules. They will give local education authorities greater flexibility in how they use their powers. The charges provide a useful simplification in the treatment of resources which can be seen as a complicated part of the social security system, and it is part of our general objective of bringing the rules for the various income-related schemes closer together and making them easier to understand. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for enabling me to put this improvement on the record before the House, even at this late hour. I hope he will welcome, as I know that he does, the response that we have been able to make to the concern expressed on this issue over a number of years.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Twelve o'clock.